Son of Darkness
by Iamareadingaddict
Summary: When Annabeth is being dragged into Tartarus by one of Arachne's webs, Percy jumps in front and manages to cut it, saving her from falling in just in time, but his momentum keeps carrying him forward and he falls into Tartarus by himself. This story will follow the same basic plot as the real books, but it will include more dark Percy.
1. Chapter 1

They stood looking down the pit that Arachne had just fallen down

 _Tartarus_

Annabeth shivered. Even just thinking about it sent shivers down her spine.

Despite this, a victorious smile lit up all of their faces. They had finally done it, the Athena Parthenos was theirs, the camps would be united.

For the first time in a long time, Annabeth was hopeful. Maybe, just maybe, their task ahead wasn't quite as impossible as it seemed.

The euphoric feeling slowly faded and Annabeth once again set her mind to the task at hand.

Looking up, she saw that Leo and Nico were able to get the Athena Parthenos into the hold of the Argo II. Although how they'd managed it was still a mystery.

Smiling, she set off towards the ship. Time to unite the camps and—

At that moment, she noticed three problems. One, there was a strand of cobweb wrapped around her left ankle. Two, that strand of cobweb was still attached to Arachne who was now falling down an endless pit into Tartarus. Three, she was currently being pulled across the floor towards that endless pit extremely fast.

She cried out, but even as her friends looked over at her in alarm she knew it would be too late.

In a last ditch effort, Percy leaped across the room, Riptide appearing in his hand as he did, and swung at the strand.

Thankfully, it worked just in time and she was able to pull herself up just before she was pulled over the edge.

Percy was not so lucky.

Time seemed to move in slow motion as she watched him fly over her head, the victorious smile on his face morphing into something else as he noticed where he was falling.

At the last second she reached out her hand and he grabbed it, it being the only thing keeping him from falling into the pit.

The gravity here was stronger like it was trying to suck him in. The pull increased and his hand began to slip.

"No!", she tried to adjust her grip, but he only fell farther.

He couldn't fall in. He just couldn't. There was no way to get him out again if he fell.

She called for Hazel, Frank, anybody. But they were too far away.

"Annabeth", Percy's voice was strained and his face was red and flushed.

She continued to frantically look around. Trying to come up with a plan, anything to save Percy. She was the daughter of Athena for Hades' sake! Why couldn't she come up with anything?

"Annabeth", his voice held more urgency than before and he slipped down again.

"Promise me. Promise me that you'll meet me on the other side".

"No! No, Percy I won't let you fall. Just hold on. They're coming, okay? Just hold on". Curse her sweaty hands, her grip on his hand wavered.

"If you don't let go than I'll pull you in with me. You have to let go, Annabeth".

She didn't want to believe it, but she could see that he was right. The stone that made up the floor was crumbling underneath her, and even from here she could feel the immense pull on her body.

"Promise me", he was more serious this time. Their eyes met and an unspoken understanding passed between them.

"I promise".

The last thing she saw before he slipped away into the gloom was those brilliant green eyes. She wasn't sure if she was ever going to see them again.

At that thought, she broke down.

She was still sitting at the edge of the pit staring at her hands when she heard Leo call from the ship.

"Percy, Annabeth! Come on! We have to leave before this floor caves in!".

At his name she almost choked up again, but she held back. She had to stay strong.

Finish the quest, rescue Percy, stop Gaea from rising. Simple.

Except it wasn't.

As soon as she reached the top of the rope ladder, she was bombarded with questions.

"Where's Percy?"

"Are you okay?"

"What happened?"

The Argo II pulled out of the cavern just as the floor finally collapsed.

After getting a good distance away from the hole in the ground that used to be Arachne's lair, everybody gathered in the common area for an emergency meeting.

After a few beats of silence, Jason finally asked the question that was on everybody's minds.

"Where is Percy?".

Annabeth has had some time to think while they were flying away. And in that time, her resolve hardened.

They _were_ going to unite the camps, they _were_ going to rescue Percy, and they _were_ going to defeat Gaea along with every last stinking giant.

This reassured, she looked him straight in the eye as she answered.

"He fell into Tartarus. And he's counting on us to get him out".

—

Falling into Tartarus felt like it took forever. All he could see around him was pitch black, and the only sound was the whistling of the air rushing past his ears as he fell.

Percy knew that Annabeth had told him some things about Tartarus during their greek lessons together. He was now cursing his inability to pay attention as he tried to remember any scrap of information that could be useful to him now. regenerated.

A reddish glow began to come up from somewhere below him, steadily growing brighter as he plummeted towards the ground

As the ground grew closer and closer, Percy began to realise that there was nothing preventing him from becoming a demigod pancake once he hit the ground.

The area he was plummeting towards looked to be filled with sharp black rock spiking up at random intervals. When he looked around in other areas, he found that all of Tartarus seemed to be made of this sharp black rock.

It glinted in the sickly reddish glow from the sky, and as he looked out along the horizon, he realised that his destination wasn't even visible.

This was going to be a long walk.

Hopelessness began to creep into his heart.

He had made Annabeth promise to meet him at the doors. It would crush her if he wasn't there. He had to survive, for her.

He was just about to give up hope on that even being possible when he felt the familiar tug in the pit of his stomach.

Somewhere near here, there was water.

He concentrated on it, willing it to listen to him. It responded, but it was cold. Oh so cold.

He vaguely registered something that Annabeth has said about this river before he hit the water with a slap.

Even with his powers the river was not welcoming, seemingly hostile, trying to pull Percy deep into its dark depths.

This wasn't even on his mind, though. As soon as his skin made contact with the water voices began to fill his head. Making him so unbearably sad it was as though the river itself was made out of distilled misery.

Only his memory of Annabeth- her grey eyes sparkling- kept him from just letting the river consume him.

" _What's the point?",_ the voices whispered in his head.

 _You'll never make it all the way across Tartarus._

 _You're all alone down here, you know._

 _You should just give in right now, it's easier._

He almost did, but suddenly, a memory filled his mind.

It was of Annabeth during one of their Greek lessons.

"The River Cocytus, or the river of sadness and despair. It's said that even just one drop of the water from that river is enough to make somebody kill themselves.".

He focused in on the details of the memory, the light reflecting off of Annabeth's golden hair, the faint smell of strawberries in the air, the twinkle in her grey eyes when Annabeth would catch him staring at her.

The memory drifted off, leaving him with a warm fuzzy feeling in his chest.

Using every remaining ounce of will power, he pulled himself out of the water, and collapsed onto the banks.

The black rocks he saw from above were as sharp and hard as glass, and they dug painfully into his hands as he pushed himself into the seated position.

The river had retreated to its banks, the strong smell of sulphur in the air being the only sign of its disturbance.

As of right now, he looked to be alone. But he could never be sure. This place puts a person on edge, you start to feel like you're being watched at all times.

He needed to move.

He scrambled to his feet, hissing at the pain that came when the sharp stones dug further into the palms of his hand.

From his initial drop into Tartarus, Percy had seen that it seemed to extend infinitely in either direction. So, without any knowledge on which way he should walk, he chose a random direction and started on his way.

The crunch of rocks under his shoes as he walked was almost soothing. He had no idea where he was going, but he figured that sooner or later the answer would find him.

After not long of walking, it started to get harder for him to breathe. Each exhale brought with it the metallic taste of blood in his mouth.

The stench of the pit was starting to get to him too. When he first landed, it was masked by the sulphur smell of the Cocytus river, but as he drew further away from it, the sickly smell filled his nostrils. Clogging them with the metallic sweet scent of blood.

In a sudden burst of inspiration that probably would have taken Annabeth thirty seconds to figure out, he realised that the air was poisonous.

"Everything about this place is deadly".

Percy was used to the constant noise of the Argo II, having been on it for the past couple of weeks or so. He missed always having somebody to talk to, so he had taken up the practice of talking to himself.

A foggy memory was hovering on the edge of his consciousness, but a sudden wave of heat pushed it from his mind.

The Phlegethon river. It looked as though it was made from fire, but it flowed like water did. Percy could even control it like water.

He was standing at its banks when he heard voices getting closer.

Not a moment too soon, he dove behind a large boulder and four empousai passed by.

He recognised one of them as Kelli. She had been disguised as a cheerleader at Goode high school and had tried to kill him and Rachel Elizabeth Dare at orientation.

Thankfully, they hadn't seen him, and continued on with their conversation.

"My arm hurts". One of the empousa that Percy didn't recognise was whining, and he peaked around the boulder so that he could see what they were doing.

One of the smaller ones was holding one of her arms which had a large wound in it. It looked painful, and he didn't blame her for whining.

"Just pour some water on it and let's go. We don't have time to just sit here. We have to get to the doors. I need my revenge on that no-good half blood Percy Jackson".

He stiffened at his name. This one he did recognise, it was Kelli. She must have regenerated since he killed her.

Something else about what she had said caught his ear, though.

 _The doors? As in, the Doors of Death?_

It was the best lead he had, and he decided to follow it.

But first, he had to take care of his breathing issue.

It was getting worse. He had to spit blood from his mouth every five minutes or so, now. And it was all he could do to keep from coughing.

The last thing he needed was to get in a fight with three empousai when he barely had enough energy to lift his sword.

Finally, they began walking again. And Percy risked another glance.

The empousai were now gathered around the one with the gash in her arm. One of them kneeled down and cupped some of the fiery water between her hands.

Percy watched with interest as they poured more and more water from the Phlegethon into the wound. To his surprise, it began to shrink and finally closed up entirely.

The empousai continued walking, leaving Percy crouched behind his boulder considering what he had just seen.

He remembered Annabeth telling him about one of the rivers of the underworld that had healing properties. They used it to heal the wounds from the torture in the Fields of Punishment so that the torture could continue.

Pretty gruesome, but now he was considering it for an entirely different purpose.

Percy had fallen down with only limited supplies. His sword, Riptide, was always in his pocket. But besides that, the only thing he had had with him when he fell was his water bottle which was hooked onto one of the belt loops on his pants.

His breathing was growing more painful, and he could feel himself begin to get dizzy. This was his only shot.

Steeling his nerves, he walked over to the banks of the river and filled his water bottle with the fiery liquid. If the Phlegethon's water had healing properties, it should also be able to heal him from the poisonous air, shouldn't it?

Slowly, he lifted the bottle to his chapped lips and drank.

The water was really hot, and tasted terrible. But as it burned its way down his throat, he started to feel better.

The metallic taste of blood in his mouth was no longer there, and he found that he could breathe much more easily.

With relief, he leaned back against the boulder. The immediate crisis was over, but now he had to focus.

He couldn't lose those empousai, they were his only lead to the doors of death.

So he forced himself to his feet, filled his water bottle with the Phlegethon water and struggled forward again.

It was hard to tell how long he followed them. He remembered Nico telling him that time works differently in Tartarus and what felt like one hour down there could possibly be years on the surface.

They followed along the banks of the river, which was thankfully littered with plenty of large boulders for him to hide behind.

Thanks to their mismatched feet, they moved quite slowly, making it easier for Percy to keep up with them.

The landscape was just beginning to change when he started to once again taste the now familiar metallic taste of blood in his mouth once again.

He forced down more of the burning liquid, coughing slightly as it burned its way down his throat.

Through this he had continued walking, but then he noticed something.

The landscape was now completely different.

He was now in an almost entirely flat plain. The only disturbances for as far as he could see being the boulders that surrounded him now.

One more thing was changed.

Throughout his entire walk following the empousai they had bickered and argued, their voices floating back to Percy and creating a constant noise.

But now it was silent, and the empousai were no longer in front of him.

 _Where did they go?_

The tingling on the back of his neck made him take out and uncap Riptide, letting it extend into his familiar sword.

In one motion, he turned around and swung, his blade making contact with the smallest empousai who had tried to leap at him from behind one of the boulders when he wasn't looking.

She immediately exploded into dust, but the other three emerged from behind their boulders just as fast.

They circled him like sharks, taunting him and licking their lips.

"Oh, a little fallen demigod. Delicious!"

"Now I will have my revenge, Jackson"

"Where's your little blonde princess, hero?"

The last comment made him angry, and he swung at the nearest empousa.

They were faster than they looked, though. And she quickly dodged.

They attacked together, and from all different directions until he could barely keep up.

One drew in closer to try and bite him, but a quick swing of Riptide saw her disintegrate into dust.

The other two screamed in rage and dove in to attack with their long claws.

He killed one more, but not before it got a painful scratch at his back, leaving the back of his shirt in tatters.

The wound burned, and he retaliated by turning her into dust.

Now it was only he and Kelli. She circled him viciously, but his patience was running low.

"Where are the doors of death?", he was surprised to realise that the tough crackly voice was his own. But he soon recovered, putting his sword against her throat.

She stopped her circling.

"You'll never make it, little hero. Mother Earth will rise, and you will be the first to fall".

"Where are they?!", he voice was lower this time, and he stuck his sword further against her neck.

She didn't seem to be affected by the sword, though, and just smiled at him with her fangs bared.

"Why should I tell you?"

He reached out with his mind and took hold of the Phlegethon river.

Calling it towards him, it arched over is head in a wave of fire and basked him in an ominous red glow.

"Because if you don't then I'm going to make you wish I had killed you".

His voice was low and his eyes flashed dark with anger.

For the first time, Percy saw a monsters face blanch in fear as Kelli looked up at him.

"Fine. Just follow the monsters. They're all going to the doors".

She tried to put as much venom into her voice as she could, but Percy could still see her warily eyeing the river behind him.

He nodded his head once, absorbing this information.

"So I can go now?"

He considered this. He had gotten the information he needed out of her. And she would most likely come back later and try to kill him.

"No"

With a swipe of his sword, she turned into dust and he continued on his way.


	2. Chapter 2

There was silence in the room, even saying the name caused an ominous chill to sweep through the room.

 _Tartarus_

Then all at once, everybody reacted, all saying the same thing.

"What?!"

"How did this happen?"

She took a slow shuddering breath as she remembered how Percy had sacrificed himself to save her.

 _No. That's not right. Not a sacrifice. They would save him._

Everybody was still staring at her, expecting an explanation.

"Before she fell, Arachne managed to wrap a strand of web around my ankle. We didn't notice... there were webs everywhere and I would have been pulled in but P-"

She took another breath before she could say his name.

"Percy leaped over and just managed to cut it before that could happen. His momentum, it carried him over the edge. I just managed to grab his hand, but I couldn't hold on. I'm so sorry"

She buried her head in her hands, letting fall the tears that she had been holding back since he had fallen.

Piper and Hazel immediately came over and comforted her as well as they could while the boys were just silent.

Frank stared at seemingly nothing, but you could see the tears gathering in his eyes. Even Jason, still stoic as ever, had a small amount of fear and sadness in his eyes as he looked at the empty chair at the head of the table.

Leo just got up and left, mumbling something about how he would be on the intercom if they needed him.

Wiping the tears from her face, Annabeth tried to clean up.

"We have to go meet him. We have to rescue him"

"How?". Hazel looked at her with wide eyes.

"Before he fell, he made me promise to meet him at the doors. He made me promise". Her voice grew quieter at the end as they all absorbed the meaning of those words.

 _An oath to keep with a final breath._

Finally, Piper broke the silence.

"It's probably nothing, Annabeth"

"Yeah. You know how difficult it is to try and interpret a prophecy".

But even they didn't believe their own words.

A heavy silence once again took over the room as everybody looked at the empty chair at the head of the table where Percy should have been sitting.

After a while of sitting in silence, Leo's voice crackled over the intercom.

"So where are we off to lovelies?"

It was nice that he was still trying to joke around. And nobody mentioned the unsteady wobble his voice had.

"To rescue Percy of course"

Annabeth responded with no question, but the others were a little bit more conflicted.

"Shouldn't we take the Athena Parthenos to camp first? I mean the two are at the brink of war", Jason said.

"How can you say that? Percy is stuck in Tartarus right now. _Tartarus._ Our main priority should be getting him out", Annabeth argued.

The two demigods glared at each other across the table.

"Percy sacrificed himself to save both you and the Athena Parthenos. We have to bring the two camps together first".

"No. No, he made me promise him. I promised him that I would meet him at the doors. We can't let him down".

"Jason's right".

Everybody turned around as Nico di Angelo emerged from the shadows in the corner of the room.

As usual, he was thin and ghostly pale, looking like he hadn't slept in days.

That didn't fool anybody, though. He exuded a sort of quiet power, and darkness flowed off of him in waves that made the entire room seem darker.

His dark eyes were heavily guarded, though Annabeth could still see the pain that flickered through them at the conversation topic.

He was one of the youngest ones on board, but when he stepped forward to speak, everybody immediately listened.

"It's impossible for Percy to make it all the way through Tartarus is just a few days. The journey will take a couple of weeks minimum. If we went now we would arrive way before he did. Not to mention the area is heavily guarded, it would be impossible for us to just sit there and wait without being captured or killed".

Everybody just stared at him with open mouths.

"What?"

"I think that's the most I've ever heard you speak", Hazel said, smiling.

He just scowled back at her. But everybody could still see the small smile that made its way onto his face.

Annabeth heard none of this, though. She was too busy considering what Nico had said.

No matter how desperate she was to save Percy, she knew that he had a point. They still had a quest to complete, and no matter how much she hated it, Percy would most likely be down there for quite a while.

Finally, she spoke up.

"Okay. Here's the plan. We get to camp Half-Blood as fast as we can with the Athena Parthenos. I talk to Reyna to explain to her what happened, and she gives the statue over to the Greeks as a peace offering. The war is called off, the gods go back to normal. Everybody gets back to Greece, we save Percy, close the doors of death, defeat Gaea, and then go home".

She nodded to herself, then looked up to find the rest of the crew agreeing.

"Okay! Sounds like a plan! So, back to Camp?".

Leo's voice sounded over the intercom. They had almost forgotten that he was still there.

"Yeah, back to camp. And let's see if we can't get a message ahead of us to warn them that we're coming".

With that, everybody started moving again.

The Argo II cut through the waves of the Atlantic like butter.

But the sight of sea foam on the water only served as a painful reminder of Percy's absence, so Annabeth busied herself below deck.

In a quick Iris message to Chiron, she found out that the two camps were already readying themselves for war, and Chiron expected the war to break out within days.

Very few people actually knew about the Prophecy of 7, and Chiron warned her that when they arrived, they would have quite a problem convincing the demigods on both sides about the imminent war with Gaea.

Chiron agreed to do as much as he could to delay the war, but if they didn't get there soon, there would be nothing they could do to stop the two camps from destroying each other.

Looking around the open plain, Percy was suddenly aware of how exposed he was. Especially with the light from the river that he had called. It was like a big glowing arrow that said 'Here I am! Come kill me!'

He refilled his bottle once more before letting the river sink back into its normal banks.

Despite this, he looked around and found that there were no monsters. Normally this would have been a good thing, but Tartarus had a way of putting your nerves on edge, making him wonder why.

 _Where had they all gone?_

This was bad. He needed to follow the monsters to get to the doors. But if there were no monsters to follow, how was he going to do this?

The large field spanned out in front of him, and for the first time, Percy realised just how big it was.

It must have extended for miles, and eerily reminded him of the Fields of Asphodel in the Underworld. Although the underworld was sounding pretty good to him compared to where he was now.

Percy had no idea where he was supposed to go, but he knew that somehow, he had to cross this field. And it wasn't going to be easy.

There was absolutely no cover, the only markings in the otherwise flatness of the plain being large yellow pustules that reminded him of zits on skin.

There was no doubt that he would be attacked when out in the openness of the field, but in a way this was good. He needed monsters to follow. Maybe if he waited for long enough one would walk by and he could follow it.

He decided to stick to this plan, and sat down to rest in the relative cover of the few boulders that surrounded him.

After what felt like a long time of waiting with still no sign of monsters, Percy felt his eyelids began to grow heavy.

He knew that he had to sleep, but he had been putting it off for as long as he could. Pure adrenaline keeping him going. There would be no way to protect himself if he fell asleep. It would be so easy to kill him.

All these things ran through his head. But eventually, pure exhaustion won out, and his eyes began to close.

He had dreams that night, like demigods usually did.

At first, they weren't so bad, more like happy memories from when he was younger.

Playing in the water at Montauk with his mom.

Laughing with Annabeth as the other campers threw them into the water after the Second Titan War.

That quickly changed when they morphed into nightmares. He saw everybody he knew and loved killed. Both Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter in flames. Frank and Hazel murdered on some sort of sacrificial pedestal. Last of all, he saw Gaea rising. Whenever she appeared in his dreams her eyes were closed, her voice seeming to come from everywhere at once.

In his dream, her eyes opened, and the sleepy calm expression that always composed her face changed into that of rage.

With that he woke up. He was covered in a thin sheen of sweat and grime, and his heart was beating so wildly in his chest he thought it would explode. Demigod dreams always meant something.

 _Was that a glimpse of what was going to happen?_

 _Or was Gaea just trying to get under his skin?_

He hoped it was the latter. She was famous for her behind-the-scenes manipulation, and he wouldn't be surprised if she was behind this.

Despite this, a nagging feeling poked at the back of his brain and refused to go away.

When he had fallen asleep, he had been so exhausted that he had barely noticed the deep claw marks that had been raked down the right side of his back during his fight with the empousai.

But now his attention was almost entirely focused on the waves of agony that seemed to radiate from the wounds.

Gently, he poured some of his small reserve of water onto the wound, hissing in pain as it began to take effect.

He had used almost a quarter of his reserves by the time the wound finally stopped bleeding and closed.

Unlike with ambrosia or nectar, Phlegethon water didn't heal wounds without leaving its mark. His skin was angry and red from the heat of the water, and the wound itself, although healed, left a mark on his skin that almost looked seared at the edges. He could tell that there would be quite a scar left over. But at this point, he didn't care.

Looking around, he noticed a group of cyclops lumbering across the valley. He hung back, watching as they slowly made their way across and entered a canyon on the other side.

On the one hand this was good news. For the first time since falling into the pit he now knew what he was supposed to do and how to do it.

But on the other hand, the canyon was the exact opposite of where he wanted to go right now. There were so many ways that he could be ambushed there it was ridiculous. And he couldn't climb over, the cliffs extended for as high as he could see, maybe even being a part of the ceiling of the cavern itself.

His only choice was to follow. So he did, albeit reluctantly.

The field was way larger than it looked. At his every step his destination seemed to grow farther and farther away.

It didn't help that there was no cover. He could already feel the tingling sensation on the back of his neck from being watched. But every time he turned around there was nothing there.

And those strange pustules in the ground were actually monsters regenerating. As he walked he tried to pop as many as he could to stop them reforming, but there were just so many, he knew it was hopeless.

When he finally reached the canyon, the strange tingling feeling on the back of his neck seemed to increase tenfold.

Whirling around, he was able to catch a glimpse of shadows running behind him before they disappeared again.

Just walking through this area was nerve-wracking. There were so many places that monsters could be hiding: in small caves, crevices, around one of the many bends the path through the canyon had. It was impossible to tell.

He walked through with Riptide already drawn and in sword form. It was a good thing, too. Because he only had a split second to react when he heard a low growl from somewhere behind him.

Whipping around, those same shadowing creatures that had been following him earlier materialised into a pack of hellhounds. Each one as big as a truck and with teeth as long as his forearm.

He slashed out blindly as the first one pounced and got a lucky shot. It didn't kill it, though, instead just causing it to limp away to join the pack.

He immediately knew that there were too many of them for him to fight all at once. His only chance would be to get to higher ground.

In a flash of inspiration, he began to climb the wall of the canyon that the hellhounds had cornered him against. About sixty meters above his head, there was a small cave. It looked big enough for a person to fit in, but he couldn't tell. And that was a risk he was going to have to take.

They pounced immediately. Swatting wildly with their paws and sharp claws. One good hit and he was as good as dead.

Once he was high enough, he began to relax a little bit. That sloppiness was the problem.

Hellhounds could jump amazing heights, despite weighing close to two tons.

One of them did just that, and managed to grab him with its claws around his right stomach and hip. The momentum of the creature almost pulled him off of the wall entirely. Almost.

Instead the huge claw ripped its way through his flesh, taking a huge portion of it with it as it fell back down.

Holding onto his grip on the wall with only one hand, he just managed to pull himself up into the small cave before passing out.

He floated between consciousness just from the blood loss and severity of his injury. Despite this, he was somehow able to muster up the strength to pour some of the river water on the injury.

It hurt like hell, and he yelled out in pain as the wound began to sizzle and then slowly close.

He was probably attracting the attention of every monster in the whole of Tartarus right now, but he couldn't help himself.

The hellhound had hooked it's claw around the side of his stomach, and when it fell, it ripped its way through his flesh, leaving four long wounds that extended from his side all the way down to his lower back.

The floor of the small cave around him was stained from his blood. So much so that he was surprised he hadn't died.

The wound still burned and hurt like hell, but he was able to keep his groans relatively quiet.

When he had stumbled in here Percy hadn't even had enough time to check if any monsters already occupied it.

Luckily, there was none, as the cave was just barely big enough to fit him.

As his senses slowly began to work again, Percy became aware of the hellhounds that were still trying to get to him.

He shifted and tried to sit up to grab his sword, but his side and back screamed in agony.

He could feel Riptide on the stone floor next to him as well as the water bottle filled with Phlegethon water.

He knew he had to pour more on to stop the blood that was still slowly leaking from his wounds. But he could hardly bring himself to do it, memories of earlier playing through his mind.

The water burned his flesh closed. It had the intended effect of stopping the bleeding, but it hurt so much it was all Percy could do to keep from passing out again.

He knew he couldn't spare any more of the water. He still needed to drink it to counteract the poisonous air in his lungs. So he capped the bottle again after taking another swig of the vile liquid.

He had no idea for how long he had been in the pit. But it felt like an eternity and he felt that maybe it would be easier if he just gave up and let the monsters kill him.

But he couldn't. He had Annabeth. And no matter how bad it was for him, he couldn't bring himself to give up on seeing her again.

His eyelids began to grow heavy, and he reluctantly settled into a restless sleep.

Gaea once again came to him in his dreams. Thankfully her eyes were still closed, but her words infuriated him.

"Oh poor little hero"

Her voice was mocking, but also held an element of malice in it.

"My husband is having such fun playing with you. It would be a shame if you were to die before he could drive you insane".

Her laugh echoed around in his brain, sending a shiver through his body and placing a strong sense of foreboding in his mind.


	3. Chapter 3

It seemed as though every monster imaginable attacked their ship on their way back to New York. Ranging from rogue harpies to a large kraken.

By the time they arrived, they were all injured in some way and exhausted.

The Argo II was pretty worse for wear too. Leo swore that he and his siblings would fix it up in no time once they arrived back at camp. But at this rate, Annabeth wasn't even sure if the ship would make it that far.

The last stretch to the Camp the Argo II was forced to take to the water as the controls had been completely destroyed in the last attack by wild venti.

In the long run, this was better. It allowed them to have a less dramatic entrance to the camp so that they didn't scare the campers.

The crew got off of the boat as quickly as they could, relieved to be on land again.

They were immediately greeted by a welcoming party of greek campers so large it looked like the entire camp had come to gawk at them.

The nature of their quest had not been revealed to the campers yet because Chiron thought that it might cause them to begin to panic. So nobody knew why the four Greek campers had suddenly disappeared.

When Annabeth came ashore, she was completely focused on the quest, totally ignoring the questions that campers all around her asked as she led the rest of the seven over to the big house to confer with Chiron.

When they arrived in the meeting room, a meeting with all of the head counsellors was already being held.

Everybody looked up from what looked to be an intense discussion when they walked in.

"Good. You're all already here. We can get started right away".

Annabeth knew why they were all gathered already, and it wasn't because they were waiting for them to arrive. There was a board laid out on the ping-pong table that served as their official meeting table, and they seemed to be discussing war strategies when they walked in. But Annabeth ignored this. They would change all of that anyway.

Greeting Chiron with a civilised nod of the head, Annabeth sat down at the head of the table to face the inevitable bombardment of questions.

Surprisingly, Clarisse was the only one to say anything at first.

"What are you doing here?".

"What? Not happy to see us?". Leo, ever the jokester, tried to lighten the atmosphere in the room, but it didn't work as Clarisse turned and glared at him before continuing.

"You abandon us when we need you most and now you're just back. A day before a major war and you have the nerve to show your face here".

Annabeth could see her anger growing, and did her best to diffuse it. Although she was seriously confused.

"Wait, what. What are you talking about? We didn't abandon you. We were on a quest!".

"Yeah, so Chiron keeps telling us. But let me ask you this… a quest doing what? There wasn't even a prophecy". The face off seemed to be between Clarisse and Annabeth now. Nobody else, including Chiron said anything. Instead choosing to just sit back and watch the two talk.

"There was a prophecy. We just didn't share it because Chiron thought that it would cause widespread panic and he didn't want to freak out the campers. I guess _that_ backfired". She said the last part more to herself. But Clarisse just scoffed.

"Oh really? If there's this big panic spreading prophecy than let's hear it. Go on. Tell me".

Annabeth didn't appreciate this. As much as she loved Clarisse, sometimes she could get on her nerves.

"Hazel, you've got it memorised, right?".

She turned bright red as everybody's attention was refocused onto her. But she managed to stammer her way through it.

"Y-yeah, I- I do".

 _Seven half-bloods shall answer the call._

 _To storm or fire the world must fall._

 _An oath to keep with a final breath,_

 _And foes bear arms to the doors of death._

The words hung in the air for a moment before Annabeth broke the silence.

"We think that the part about foes bearing arms to the doors of death refers to the two different camps of demigods, Roman and Greek, working together to defeat Gaea's army at the doors of death".

"Well that's never going to happen. Even if we wanted to help with this ridiculous so called prophecy. The Romans wouldn't help. They're hell bent on destroying us. They won't listen to anything that we try to tell them".

"Oh they will. They'll listen to us. Percy—". She took a deep breath before continuing. "Percy told us that if we could get their praetor, Reyna, alone, she would listen to us". She stood up, and the rest of the seven followed her lead.

"Wait! Where are you going? We're not done talking. You can't just drop a bomb like that and leave!". Clarissa shouted after them as they turned to leave.

Annabeth gave Chiron a pointed glance before once again addressing the rest of the head counsellors.

"This is not new information. After my Iris message with Chiron a few days ago I expected that he would have filled you all in. But I suppose not. We are going to bring a few Roman representatives here. They will hopefully come in peace and from there we can negotiate how we can work together".

She directed her next words at Chiron, "Fill them in. Explain the prophecy. This is an issue that is bigger than all of us. The Gods, the Titans… Gaea herself is waking, and if that happens there is nothing to stop her from destroying us all".

On that positive note, she turned and walked out of the room with the rest of the crew following in her wake.

As soon as they arrived on the border of Camp Half-Blood they were confronted by Roman border guards.

They wouldn't let them pass, insisting that they had direct orders not to let anyone pass.

No matter how convincing they were, they guards would not budge.

Their position didn't improve when they saw Jason. Apparently he had been classed as a traitor by Octavian and was hated among the legion now.

Annabeth could see that this made him sad, no matter how much he tried to hide it. The legion was one of the only homes he had ever known, to find out that he wasn't welcome there anymore must have crushed him.

They couldn't give up, and the guards refused to go and get Reyna, so they were forced to use drastic measures.

Jason said that he could fly over, but he only had the strength for two people, himself and somebody else.

It was almost unanimous that Annabeth should be that other person, as she was one of the only one of the Greeks that Reyna had even considered talking to in the past.

With that settled, Jason summoned the winds and flew both he and Annabeth over the ranks of Roman soldiers and straight towards the commanders tent. Arrows were shot at them but Jason deflected them all with a simple wave of his hand.

He seemingly did this all without breaking a sweat, and Annabeth was once again reminded about how much she underestimated Jason and his powers.

When they arrived at Reyna's tent, she was already outside waiting for them, flanked by two guards.

Her expression, hard and unreadable as always, softened just a fraction when she saw Jason, but quickly hardened up again by the time they had landed.

The soldiers at her side had been waiting to restrain them and take them away, but Reyna held up a hand.

"Why are you here?". Curiosity lit up her face as she studied the two.

"Reyna, we need to talk".

She must have sensed the urgency in Annabeth's voice, because she called off her guards and ushered them inside of her tent.

Once they had gotten settled, Reyna resumed her hardened glare.

"What is it?"

"Well, long story short, Gaea is rising. A while back, we got a prophecy that we are calling the Prophecy of Seven. Jason here tells me that you have had something similar?".

Reyna just nodded her head and looked over at her two metal dogs, Argentum and Aurum.

"I will listen. But so will my dogs. If you lie to me, or try to deceive me in any way, they _will_ tear you to shreds, and I won't stop them".

Annabeth explained about Gaea's rising and the doors of death finally ending with a plea.

"Please, Reyna. The two camps need to work together. The gods are split between their forms and are too weak to help us as they are. We need to work together to defeat Gaea. It is the only way"

The daughter of the war goddess seemed to consider this for a small time before she finally replied.

"I will have to think about it. My dogs have not killed you, which means you speak the truth. But I cannot easily forgive what you and your kind has done. And it is not just my decision in the matter. I will need to discuss this with the legion. We will give you our deliberation tomorrow".

She spoke with a finality in her voice that told Jason and Annabeth that it was time for them to go.

Sighing, Annabeth and Jason stood up to leave.

"Just consider this, praetor. If Gaea rises, she will destroy all of us. Even New Rome. We _must_ cooperate, or else she has already won".

Annabeth's words seemed to distract her, and she stared at the wall lost in her own thoughts.

On a positive note, they had today and most of tomorrow to rest and heal. On a negative note, Reyna's decision would determine the fate of the entire world. And Annabeth didn't have the slightest clue how she was thinking.

When he woke up the next morning, his heart was beating faster than he thought possible. Gaea's words from his dream still plagued his mind as he struggled to sit up against the wall of the cave.

Thankfully, the hellhounds had left at some point in the night, but that didn't reassure him.

If he left the cave, more monsters would surely attack, and he didn't know if he had the strength to fight them off in his current state.

But he had to try. Dread settled in the pit of his stomach as he pushed off the wall and began his slow descent down the face of the cliff he had crawled up.

It was slow going, his wound protesting at every move he made. But slowly, he began to loosen up again, and was soon on the ground of the path.

He had taken off his shredded shirt and tied it around his wounds like a bandage. He could feel it being soaked with blood as his movement reopened the wounds.

Normally he would have had to wait for a monster to follow, but there was only one direction to walk in, and nowhere to hide.

He had been right when he assumed that monsters would immediately sense him within the confines of the canyon. The smell of Tartarus itself usually masked his own scent from the monsters, but Tartarus must have really wanted Percy dead, because now he had no such luck.

It seemed as though every monster in Tartarus found him. And there was no running away.

Thankfully, his sword fighting skill had improved significantly and he was able to hold his own. But that only just managed to keep him alive.

He was just starting to think that he couldn't go on anymore when the attacks suddenly stopped.

This put him more on edge than when they were happening. Something was coming, something that Percy was not going to like.

It was like he couldn't get a break. His battered body was covered with bruises and cuts and scrapes from his battles. Not to mention the bloody bandage substitute that was now completely soaked.

As if on cue, a white mist began to seep out from the rocks. For some reason, this mist terrified him even more than any monster would.

He could hear screams of terror and voices coming out of it as if he were standing next to the river Cocytus or Acheron.

He ran. Well, as much as you could call it running. His battered body was completely exhausted, and screamed in protest as he pushed it forward faster and faster.

But it was no use. The mist seemed to ooze out of every crevice and crack, almost like it was coming from Tartarus itself.

When it overtook him, he was completely blinded at first, seeing and hearing nothing but white mist.

Then the screaming started. He saw visions.

To his right, his mother appeared, being held aloft by her neck by a big meaty paw that could only belong to the minotaur. She mouthed at him to 'Go' before dissolving into a shower of bright light.

"No!".

He charged, anger coursing through him. But when he went to swipe through it with his sword, it just dissolved into mist and disappeared.

Next he saw Bianca di Angelo running towards the giant automaton.

He tried to warn her, but she didn't listen to him. The giant collapsed and was defeated, but as he ran around the wreckage, Bianca was no where to be found.

"No! Not again!".

He fell to his knees in front of a piece of wreckage, but it only disappeared into the mist.

Annabeth appeared. He turned around right as she took a knife for him to protect his Achilles spot.

She collapsed to the ground, gasping. Anger made his blood rage through him, and he swiped at everybody there, but every time he did they would just disappear into the mist until it was just Percy and Annabeth.

She was groaning in pain and trying to stem the flow of blood from her wound. Frantically he looked around for any ambrosia or nectar, but there was none.

With one last shuddering breath she stopped moving, her eyes staring at nothing and he broke down.

The mist disappeared, but he hardly noticed between his sobs.

"Annabeth! NO!"

He curled up on the ground, ignoring the sharp pain that came when the small sharp rocks dug into his skin and let the tears fall.

Tartarus laughed, a chilling sound that went straight through him and made him shiver with sudden cold.

That's when he realised that Tartarus was messing with him. Trying to drive him mad.

 _Well it's working_

Slowly, he uncurled and stood up with shaky legs.

 _That wasn't real. None of it was real._

He had to keep telling himself this as he slowly began to trudge forward again.

Eventually, the canyon trail began to end, opening up once again into a seemingly endless flat plain.

The only thing that disturbed it was what seemed to be a castle that was situated at the far end of the plain.

The castle was dark, and seemed to absorb any small amount of light there was in Tartarus to begin with.

He drank more of the disgusting river water from his bottle, but he was still too exhausted to even imagine trying to cross that plain right now.

He was bound to be spotted and attacked, at least in the canyon there might be another small cave he can rest in until he was ready.

Not far up a wall to his left, he spotted one, and began to climb.

Thoughts of Annabeth still circled painfully in his mind as he saw her lifeless body every time he blinked or closed his eyes.

 _No. That didn't happen. I won't let it happen._

When he reached the cave, he found it was hardly anything more than an indentation in the rock. Enough for him to sleep on, but not really guarding him from view.

Still, it was better than staying on the trail, and he was so exhausted he hardly cared.

Sweet memories of Annabeth and Camp Half-Blood circled in his mind, and soon, his eyes closed an he fell asleep.


	4. Chapter 4

When Annabeth and Jason returned to Camp Half-Blood, they relayed all that had been said at their conversation with Reyna.

It was hard to tell which direction she was leaning towards, although if Annabeth knew Reyna, she would want to help.

The only problem would be Octavian. He was dead set on war, and he would do everything in his power to sway Reyna's opinion.

The time they had to rest was very much appreciated, for the crew, and for the Argo II.

Leo and his siblings worked tirelessly fixing the ship and giving it new upgrades that would help on their journey back. While the others had almost constant meetings with the cabin leaders.

They managed to convince the Greeks not to fight, but Clarisse was adamant that they would protect themselves if the Romans attacked.

Finally, everybody gathered on Half-Blood Hill to hear what Reyna had decided to do.

"Demigods! I have given this much deliberation, and I have decided that the Romans will not attack the Greeks! Yet. I have never heard of this so called war with Gaea, but I find that those of you who have talked to me did not lie. So, I have decided to give you eight days. Eight days to bring something to me that will prove this war with Gaea. Then, and only then the Roman legion will help you".

There was a brief moment of silence when everybody was attempting to understand what she had said. But then they exploded.

"You are letting them off!".

Octavian, a scrawny Roman kid with a teddy bear hanging from his belt loop was the loudest of them all, yelling at Reyna until spittle flew from his mouth and his face turned red.

"Yet?! Yet! We'll show you yet!".

Somebody had to hold back Clarisse from charging into their camp as her own one-person army.

Various other voices from both Roman and Greek camps yelled out things at Reyna. But Annabeth was silent.

She made eye contact with the roman praetor and found herself understanding her decision.

She turned to the others aboard the Argo II that was hovering above the two camps.

"I understand why she has done this. It will set us back quite a while, and our window of time is rapidly closing, but if we hurry, I think we can get there and back in enough time to defeat Gaea".

The others nodded, but Piper was still confused.

"Okay. So what are we going to go bring back as proof of the war?".

"Percy". Everybody quieted at his name. "He will be able to convince the two sides to work together. He will be our proof".

Below them, the two camps were still arguing loudly with one another. Yelling curses in both ancient Greek and Latin.

The demigods had to be let in on the plan, but at this rate, nothing productive was going to happen anytime soon.

"QUIET!".

Nico was not a loud kid. In fact he hardly spoke at all. So when he yelled out, everybody immediately stopped talking to look up at him.

He flushed when he became the sudden center of attention, but luckily Annabeth took it over for him.

"Thank you Nico. Okay, we accept these terms, although we must say that this will set us back quite a while. Gaea will rise on the first of August whether we are ready for her or not. Percy told us that you would be more cooperative, but I guess this is the most that we can get, so thank you. We will return with your proof".

She turned around so that they could leave, but somebody called out from below.

"Where is Percy?".

It was a question that it seemed everybody wanted to know, as nobody spoke, waiting for an answer.

Annabeth stepped back to the edge of the ship to once again address the crowd of demigods.

She could feel tears stinging in her eyes, but she willed her voice to stay strong.

"Percy— Percy is in Tartarus".

The affect her words had was almost immediate, ranging from shock to outrage.

So she was forced to explain once again how Percy had sacrificed himself for her.

Once she had finished explaining, unsettled murmuring went through the crowd. But finally, someone spoke.

"Well why are you up there? We need to give him a proper service. Burn his burial shroud!".

Everybody agreed with solemn faces, and Annabeth could have sworn that she even saw Chiron shed a few tears.

She turned to Nico for help once again.

"Percy is not dead!"

"Oh yeah? And how do you know _that_ death boy!", someone from the roman camp shouted.

He turned to them, pinning them to the spot with his dark eyed-glare.

"Because I am just that. The son of Hades. I can sense every one of the souls on this field right now. Would you like to test out the accuracy of my powers?".

The poor Roman kid was pinned to the spot, and others around him backed away.

But Hazel put her hand on Nico's shoulder and whispered a few things into his ear.

Reluctantly, he relaxed, and marched back to his cabin.

Hazel fixed the same kid with a glare before following him, the sound of the door closing resounding over the field with a bang.

Annabeth tiredly ran her hand down her face before continuing.

"Does this new information change your decision?".

She was looking directly at Reyna, but Octavian spoke up.

"Don't believe them. They are lying Graecus scum! They are trying to trick us!".

Reyna sighed, and for the first time Annabeth saw a small amount of emotion flicker through her face as Octavian spoke: annoyance.

"The deadline still stands. Bring us back proof of this war within eight days and we will help you. If you have not returned by then, we will invade your camp".

With that said, she turned around and walked away with a flourish.

Annabeth walked across the deck so that she was now only addressing the Greek campers.

"We will be back before that deadline. Do not attack! We will be back, and we will bring Percy back with us!".

The greeks cheered and dispersed, but Annabeth couldn't help the chill that ran through her.

 _How were they going to do all of this alone?_

—

Hazel was just barely able to calm Nico down after that Roman insulted him.

She knew that Nico still cared deeply for Percy and was as upset as the rest of them, but he would never admit it.

As he walked below deck he slammed the door to his cabin behind him, and she knew that he wouldn't want to talk right now.

 _That's fine. It's not like I needed to talk to someone or anything._

She went into her own cabin, and not long after, she heard a loud cheer and her other friends came back down the stairs, all going into their own cabins. Well, except for Annabeth. Annabeth had been sleeping in Percy's cabin since he had fallen down the pit.

Mention of Percy just made everybody feel sad for his loss all over again, and she supposed that had an even greater effect on Annabeth.

Annabeth and Percy loved each other so much that she wondered how the Fates could be so cruel to them.

They had saved Olympus countless times, and then they were dragged apart and reunited only for Percy to fall into Tartarus. It wasn't fair.

At the same time, she knew that Annabeth was by nobody's standards weak. She was stronger than Hazel thought possible, and would probably stop at nothing to get Percy back.

—

Gaea invaded his dreams again. Showing him images of such horrible things that when he awoke his face was streaked with tears.

Opening his eyes, he came face to face with something very unexpected.

A man was standing above him, so close to his face that he could smell his breath.

It smiled creepily.

"Mother wants to see you".

In a flash he had his sword out and pointed at the thing, for the first time noticing something about it.

It was not a normal man. Around it was a sort of aura that radiated power, much like the gods. But unlike the gods whose aura put them in a golden light, this thing's aura was black, sucking the light out of the surrounding area and making it seem darker than it already was. Much like the mansion in the distance.

Despite the sword in its face, it only smiled again and walked away, receding down a set of stairs that seemingly appeared and then disappeared as he moved.

"Why should I follow you?".

It was odd, the creature did not attack, did not do anything but tell him to follow it. What made it think that he would?

"I don't know. All I know is that you will. It's your destiny". At the word destiny, the creature turned around and smiled, an ominous smile that sent a shiver down his spine.

Percy watched as the strange man began to move across the open plain, any monster nearby it ran away, as if afraid.

He considered this, he needed to cross this plain without dying. The last time he had tried something like that he had nearly died and this plain was at least double the size. Monsters seemed to be afraid of the being, so Percy could use that to make it across, and then run away once he was across.

It seemed like a good plan, and every second the creature walked farther and farther away, so before he could move much farther, Percy gathered up what little things he had with him and ran to catch up with it.

It didn't acknowledge his presence, just nodded its head and continued walking.

Percy realised that his suspicions were right when the creature began guiding it towards the black mansion that he had seen earlier.

"Who are you?", Percy asked. A feeling of apprehension was starting to take over him, and he felt his feet dragging, as if they didn't want to continue forward and encounter whatever lived in that mansion.

It didn't answer him, so Percy wracked his brain for anything that Annabeth might have told him about a dark creature living in a strange mansion in the middle of Tartarus.

He came up with nothing. And soon, they had arrived.

The creature stopped at the front of the building, and shouted out, "My lady! I have brought you the boy!"

There was no answer, but a black smoke began to come out of the crevices of the doors.

Percy turned to the man next to him.

"Who _are_ you?"

The creature laughed. "You already know".

With that it touched a finger to Percy's forehead, and his mind was immediately filled with images, causing him to fall to his knees as he was overwhelmed.

The last image stayed with him for the longest, burned into his mind just as it had that fateful day back when he was 12.

The three fates, sitting at a fruit stand on the side of a major road, snipping the line of blue yarn which was his life's cord.

Just as these images bombarded his brain, so did the answer.

"You— You're Moros, primordial god of destiny".

The creature smiled. "Very good. I was beginning to think that your fall to Tartarus had a more dramatic effect on you than we initially thought".

"You've been watching me? What do you want?". He grew braver. He was fed up with the cryptic ways that gods and other powerful beings answered his questions, and he was not in the mood to try and decipher something now.

The creature's eyes widened ever so slightly at his impudence.

He was about to say more when the doors to the mansion suddenly opened.

Some instinct of his told him to close his eyes, and he followed it, having learnt long ago to trust them.

He heard the doors close again and he opened his eyes, coming face to face with a tall woman who's body seemed to be made of pure darkness.

Her eyes were made of small galaxies, and the raw amount of power that she exuded practically force him to kneel.

Her name immediately came to his mind, and he used it to address her in a way that he figured she would find pleasing.

"My lady, Nyx".

The creature beside him did not kneel, but instead stepped forward to address her.

She did not seem to like this, as she scowled when she looked down at him.

"My lady. I have brought you the boy that you requested".

He did kneel then, leaving Percy at the mercy of the full extent of her gaze.

"Demigod. Why have you come here?".

Her voice seemed to come from everywhere at the same time, much like Gaea's did. And somehow, Percy knew that Nyx was just as powerful.

"My lady,", she seemed to like it when he called her that, "I have come to close the doors of death, I—".

She cut him off. "That is impossible! If the doors were open I would have known! My children would have known!".

She glared down at him as if he were lying, and there was no doubt in his mind that she had the power to condemn him to eternal punishment with just the flick of her wrist.

"Respectfully, my lady. I am not lying. I am part of a prophecy to defeat Gaea, stop her from waking".

"Gaea! Why that little—". She seemed to compose herself before she could continue. "If you are part of a prophecy why are you here?".

Percy was about to answer but Moros answered for him.

"To defy _me!_ The girl was supposed to fall down the pit. Not him. It was her destiny. Her fate! _He_ interrupted it. _He_ should be punished", Moros sounded strangely like a little kid when they didn't get what they wanted. And the thought was so absurd, that Percy bursted out laughing.

Both Moros and Nyx looked at him as if he had gone crazy (which he might have).

Laughing felt so good. He hadn't laughed in what felt like an eternity, and the idea of Moros, one of the all-powerful primordial gods, as a little kid whining to his mother was just so funny that he couldn't help himself.

"Quiet!", Moros yelled at him. But it only made him laugh harder.

Nyx looked at him curiously, thoughts of obliterating him gone from her mind.

"What do you laugh at little half-blood?".

"Nothing nothing, my lady. Just the weakness of your son, Moros".

That seemed the wrong thing to say, as Moros was in front of him in seconds.

"I'll show you weakness! Do you want to see the fate that I have laid out for your precious girlfriend, Perseus?".

Before he could respond, Moros once again touched Percy's forehead, and his laughing was cut short.

He saw Annabeth and his friends, on the Argo II sailing towards him by themselves.

He barely had time to wonder why they were still on their own before the Argo II was attacked. The image changed, all of his friends were in some sort of cage in what looked to be an old long-destroyed temple. All his friends except Annabeth.

 _Where was she?_

He got his answer when his vision continued and he looked over to see her sitting in chains next to a group of cyclops who were stroking her like some sort of pet. His vision changed once again, and he watched to his horror, as Annabeth's throat was cut and spilled onto a sacrificial table.

He screamed. Anger and sadness and pain rolling off of him in waves and waves of power. Faster than he could blink, Moros was on the ground under Percy with golden ichor flowing from wounds that he had inflicted with Riptide which was now pointed at his throat.

"Fool! I am immortal! You cannot kill me!".

But Percy didn't hear anything. Rage still coursing through his blood and making his vision tunnel and shrouding everything in red.

He focused in on the golden ichor flowing from the primordial's wounds.

Time moved in slow motion as he watched it flow, moving so similarly to water.

He wanted to make this, this _thing_ pay. Nothing hurt Annabeth, not while he was alive. And he was, he really was.

Percy's senses became hyper aware. He could feel the blood pumping through his veins, or more accurately, the water that made up the blood that pumped through his veins.

He reached out with his mind, taking hold of the water in the primordial's ichor, and willing it to come to him.

The wounds bled faster instead of healing and closing up like they normally would have. And Moros' voice was cut off as he looked down and watched with a mixture of horror and pain on his face.

Nyx just watched with an intense look of curiosity as one of her sons was drained of his ichor.

Percy saw the light begin to fade from Moros' eyes, his ichor forming a puddle around his body.

Just before the light faded completely he was stopped.

He immediately knew who was behind it and turned his gaze up to Nyx, daring her to do something.

"Stop. I have seen enough. I will allow you to live but I cannot allow you to kill Destiny".

Percy stepped to the side, not by his own accord but as if he was being controlled by another (which he was).

With a wave of her hand, Moros stood, good as new.

He glared at him from across the courtyard that they were standing in, but Percy was still reeling in his new found power.

Now that he had discovered it, he could feel the beat of every nearby creature's blood. It was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.

But slowly, the sensation faded, his vision came back to normal and he realised just where he was and what he had done.

He fell to his knees in front of Lady Nyx, now released from the hold that she had on him earlier.

"Forgive me, my lady. I don't know what took over me".

He could feel her eyes on him before she said, "Rise half-blood. My son was foolish, you have proven yourself well. You will make a good addition to our ranks".

He rose as she asked him to, but looked at her in confusion.

"I'm sorry, my lady. Your ranks?".

"Yes. You have proven yourself as strong as any of my offspring. You may join them in serving me".

Moros spluttered behind him.

"A demigod? Join us? It is not possible!".

For once, Percy agreed with him. "It is true, my lady. Tartarus is already killing me. Even the air is poisonous to mortals like myself. I cannot join your ranks. I am sorry".

He hoped it was enough for her to let him go. But he could once again feel her eyes on him, the galaxies studying him like he was an interesting piece of art.

"Very well, then. If you must go, let me depart on you something that I have never given before".

With that, she walked over and place her hand on his shoulder. At first, nothing happened, but then he felt an intense burning on the nape of his neck, that cause him to yell out in pain and try to move away. But she held on fast, and soon, the pain turned into a great sense of power.

Taking her hand away, she stepped back until he could once again look her in the eyes.

"Wha-What did you do to me?", he asked, looking at his hands as if he had never seen them before.

"A gift. I have bestowed upon you my blessing. All my offspring shall listen to anything you command, and it will give you great power".

Percy didn't know what to say, so he bowed and kneeled in front of her.

"Thank you my lady. This means a great deal to me".

And it did. For the first time since falling into Tartarus Percy no longer felt like he was stuck in a hopeless situation.

 _Maybe he could actually survive_

"You are very welcome. Now come, through here. Walking through my house is the only way that a mortal can get to the heart of Tartarus. That is where you are going, yes?".

"Yes, my lady. Thank you".

"Be warned, what is contained inside of my house is not for mortal eyes. Do not, under any circumstances open your eyes to look until you cross my property line".

"Yes my lady".

With that, she opened the door and he snapped his eyes shut.

The walk through Nyx's mansion felt like it took years. With every step forward his senses screamed at him to open his eyes and turn around. But he heeded Nyx's warning and did not. Even when something came so close to his face that he could feel its breath.

Finally, he felt water. That familiar tug in the pit of his stomach was such a relief, but he knew he couldn't open his eyes yet.

 _The river must be the property line_

Voices filled his head. Begging to be released, saying they didn't deserve it. Then they moved on to trying to make him jump, saying that he was a murderer, showing him all of the monsters he had ever killed.

He almost listened to them, he almost jumped.

Only his memory of Annabeth, golden hair reflecting the light of the sunshine kept him from doing it.

Using every last scrap of self-will he had left, he drew energy from the river and jumped.


	5. Chapter 5

The morning of their fourth day of travelling, Leo woke everybody up by speaking over the intercom.

"All right, m'hearties! Land ho!", he said all of this in his cheesy pirate voice. And he must of heard the crew's collective groaning because his next words were in his normal voice. "Wake up! We'll be over land in about four hours".

Annabeth got ready slower than usual this morning. Glancing longingly out the window in her room at the sea far far below. Since being attacked by vicious sea monsters almost their entire trip from Rome to New York, they had decided that they would stick to the air for most of the trip back.

No matter how logical this was, Annabeth couldn't help but miss being on the water. The smell of sea foam reminded her of Percy and made her feel better about their separation.

Her energy picked up when she fully absorbed what Leo had said.

 _Reaching land in four hours. Rescuing Percy in four hours! Just four more hours…_

She reached the common area for breakfast at about the same time as everybody else. And after grabbing some food, she went to sit down at the head of the table.

Since Percy was gone, she had kind of become the defunct leader, and even though sitting at Percy's place felt wrong, the other's insisted.

Once everybody was seated, (including Leo who had relinquished the controls to Coach Hedge for a short time) Annabeth began to explain the plan.

She started off by looking at Hazel and Nico.

"What do you guys know about this place?"

Nico started, "The doors of death are currently located at the Necromanteion or the House of Hades. It is an underground temple to my father and his wife, Persephone".

Hazel continued from there, "The doors are located at the very bottom level of the temple, which is guarded by a maze and is very unstable. Our only way to reach them would be to navigate the maze, which is where I come in".

"Okay… So how many monsters are we talking about here?", Jason asked Nico.

"The doors are bound to be very heavily guarded. If we navigate the maze correctly and reach them, there could be thousands and thousands of monsters guarding the doors".

Everybody's faces darkened. They were on their own, it would take a hell of a lot of manoeuvring to gain access to the doors.

Annabeth was also feeling the gravity of their odds sink in, but she tried to motivate everybody else nonetheless.

"Come on guys! Percy is still alive! He's been in Tartarus for two weeks! Nobody has ever done that before. We owe it to him to rescue him, and close the doors".

Everybody nodded their heads in agreement, but a happy mood did not return.

Festus' weird machine language clacked over the intercom, and Leo stood up.

"Festus says that we're approaching land".

Everybody filed out and onto the deck of the Argo II. Below them, stretched Epirus, Greece. It was beautiful, but the skyline was marred by one thing.

"Hazel, do you see that?", Nico asked Hazel.

Her face had become sickly pale, and the two of them seemed to be staring at the same point on the horizon.

"What? What do you see?". Annabeth's eyes scoped over everything but she didn't see anything.

Black lightening shot out over the horizon, the remainder of dark energy shooting into the sky.

The younger boy's eyes darkened even further (if possible) and his voice was solemn as he said, "The Doors of Death are opened".

"But we're still at least two hours away! By the time we get there there will be too many monsters to fight", Piper said.

Annabeth knew that she was right. But she didn't want to believe it.

 _They hadn't gone through so much just to be two hours away and have to give up._

"Leo! Can this thing go any faster?".

He got a mischievous glint to his eye and ran down to the engine room already removing tools from his belt.

About ten minutes later, the ship jerked and began to move faster, sailing over the Greek coast so fast the sea was a blur underneath them.

 _Just hold on, Percy. We're coming._

Two hours of tense waiting later, they finally arrived above Epirus.

There had been a strange few number of monster attacks, which only served to put Annabeth further on edge about the whole situation.

According to Nico and Hazel, that strange black lightening shot through the sky about every five minutes or so. Meaning, that every five minutes the already large monster army grew.

Despite the heat of the day and all the events of the past few days, life for mortals continued on as normal, and there were even a few tourists crawling in and around the ruins.

They didn't seem to notice the large Greek warship that settled right next to the cliff, nor anything unusual about the seven demigods that marched towards the entrance decked out in full battle armour and weapons.

 _The mist must really be working over time._

Hazel guided them effortlessly through the tunnels, making random sharp twists and turns. But as they got deeper and deeper, her face seemed to get paler and paler.

To top it all off, she kept glancing back at Nico as if nervous about something.

"Hey, Hazel", Frank walked faster to match pace with Hazel who was at the front of the pack, "Are you okay? You seem a little bit on edge"

If possible, she paled even further.

She turned back to face the group and put her hand on the wall, closing her eyes in concentration.

"Hazel? Hazel are you okay?".

"No! No, there's too many of them, we need another plan".

Annabeth and the others were confused.

"We knew that there were going to be a lot of monsters when we walked in here, just calm down, okay?".

Nico drew her into a hug that was probably supposed to be comforting, but even Nico looked a little bit paler than usual.

"Guys seriously, what's going on? You're starting to freak me out a little", Leo said. He was trying to joke around, but even his voice shook.

Just then, Hazel's golden eyes opened and seemed to lock onto something behind them.

"Guys! Run!", she and Nico took off, leaving the rest to follow with no idea what they were running from.

A series of complicated twists and turns later, Hazel and Nico finally stopped running.

"Do you think we lost them?", he asked her.

"For now…". She still looked scared out of her wits.

"What is going on?!".

Annabeth was getting frustrated. How could she plan to defeat something she couldn't see?

Nico checked that his half-sister was okay one more time before turning to the rest and explaining.

"This place is full of the souls of the restless. They don't like Hades or Pluto's children and they've been following us for a while now. They had almost overtaken us back there, that's why we had to run".

"Couldn't you guys have just done some of your ghosty voodoo powers or something to make them go away?", Leo asked. He was still breathing heavy from the random sprint.

"No, they're spirits of the restless dead, those who haven't gotten the chance to cross into the Underworld or have resisted it. They haven't entered our father's domain yet so we have no power over them".

Annabeth's head was spinning with this new information.

"They're gone now, though right?".

"Yeah, for now", Hazel seemed to have regained some of her wits and was now standing up straight and on her own. "It doesn't matter, though, we're already here. Listen".

Everybody pressed an ear the the stone of the wall of the tunnel next to them and listened. Hazel was right, noise that could only come from a large army was emanating through the walls. Annabeth could only imagine how many could be in there if the noise was this loud through all the stone.

"How many?".

"Thousands. There's no way we can beat all of them head on".

Annabeth's mind was way ahead of that, though. And the beginnings of a plan were already starting to form in her brain.

"Okay. This is what we're going to do".

Their plan was simple, someone had to be on the mortal side of the elevator to let out whatever came, otherwise whatever it was would be dispersed into Chaos.

Their plan was for Nico to shadow travel to right behind the elevator to press the button every time it dinged. It didn't really matter what he let out, as long as they didn't leave Percy in that elevator for too long.

The rest of them were to be stationed around the room in various points so that they could attack if Nico was captured.

It seemed easy enough, so naturally it fell apart the second they stepped into the room.

Calling the number of monsters in the massive room an army would be an understatement. It was more like a few armies.

There were thousands and thousands of monsters, and as soon as they stepped into the overcrowded cavern they were spotted.

Nico shadow travelled away, and Annabeth could only hope that he planned on continuing with the plan. But the rest of the crew was captured and thrown into a cage.

As they walked by, every single monster was jeering and yelling insults at them. There was no hope of escape. Annabeth had calculated everything, and no matter which way you sliced the problem both their lives and Percy's life squarely relied on whether or not Nico continued with the plan.

As the rest of her crew was thrown into the cage, Annabeth prepared herself to be thrown in as well when somebody called out, "Wait!".

She turned, expecting to see some sort of god in disguise come to her rescue, but instead she came face-to-face with a large ugly cyclops.

Its skin was caked with mud and grime, but all the monsters nearby seemed to sit up straighter around him, so she could only assume that he was some sort of general.

"We'll take this one over here with us", it said, sneering. It's teeth were black and riddled with holes, and its breath made her want to puke as it fanned her face. But she held it together and glared at him.

"Get away from me!". She struggled as the larger cyclops dragged her over to where they had set up camp on the other side of the courtyard.

A well aimed kick brought one of the cyclops to its knees with a howl, and she had just wiggled out of the others' grasp when a huge blow knocked her to the ground, almost knocking her out.

The one she assumed to be the general stood above her snarling.

"It is pointless to struggle, half-blood", he snarled, picking her up by her hair.

She writhed around in pain as he carried her over to his "throne" and placed her on the floor next to him.

The entire situation reminded Piper a little bit of Star Wars as she and the crew looked on helpless from their cage.

The remaining crew were starting to lose hope, and sat down defeated in their cage.

Suddenly, they were drawn out of their thoughts by Nico who emerged from the shadows behind their cage.

He called their attention with a small wave. He didn't say anything for fear of being caught and instead motioned to them in confusion.

Finally, they managed to convey that they needed him to continue with the mission.

With that, he disappeared once again into the shadows. Leaving the rest of the crew to hold on to the small hope that Percy was still alive.

So far, the only things that had emerged from the elevators that were the doors of death were monsters.

But then, the flow abruptly stopped.

The monsters began to get suspicious when the elevator took at least fifteen minutes to come back to the surface.

The crew stuck in the cage, however, knew exactly what that meant.

 _Percy._


	6. Chapter 6

Percy's eyes flew open the second his feet hit the ground. He had never been so happy to see the desolate landscape of Tartarus.

He looked back, but all he saw was the river, and Nyx's palace flickering like a mirage on its other bank.

A hill stretched in front of him, so he began to climb it. He had no idea how much longer he had to walk before he reached the doors from Nyx's mansion. She hadn't told him. But it couldn't be much longer now.

What he saw when he reached the top of the hill took his breath away. A large army of monsters was gathered around one central point. They looked like blurs on the horizon but Percy had no doubt in his mind about what they were.

 _The doors of death_

There must have been thousands and thousands of all sorts of monsters gathered around the doors.

There was no way that he was getting even remotely close to them without a plan.

Just then, a pack of hellhounds walked by very close to the rock on the hill that Percy was hiding behind.

Before he could hide, one of them spotted him, looking at him with those fiery red eyes.

He had flashbacks to when a pack just like this one had attacked him, and the scars from his still healing wounds ached as a painful reminder.

They were about to give him away, so he had to think fast.

 _What had Nyx said about her children listening to me? Are hellhounds Nyx's children?_

He had no other choice, as they were seconds from howling and giving him away.

Standing up and turning around, he showed them the mark that Nyx had burned into his skin.

They immediately stopped and cocked their heads as if confused before the meaning of the symbol finally dawned on them.

Reluctantly, they lowered their heads in a sort of bow and stood still.

 _Waiting for my command I suppose._

He couldn't believe that that had actually worked. It was kind of a last ditch effort, but this could really help him out with his plan.

Beckoning one forward, he said, "I am going to climb onto your back and lay low in your fur. You are going to walk towards the doors with your pack. Do _not_ give me away".

The hellhound growled at him, and for a second he was scared that it would try and kill him blessing or no. But at the last second it stopped and lowered its body so that he could climb on.

The hellhounds were massive, and their fur could easily cover up and hide him if he laid down flat on ones back.

His plan for pretty much his entire time down in Tartarus had been improv, and this time was no different. He had absolutely no idea how he was going to be able to cut the chains holding the doors to this place and not be seen.

But first he had to get as close as possible to the doors. The hound shifted below him as it walked at a slow pace. He risked a peak over the side of its body and discovered that he had travelled a long distance. Even though it felt like they were moving very slowly, the hounds strides were so long that they still covered distance very quickly.

The hellhound got as close as he dared to the huge doors before stopping and growling. Obviously trying to convey that he would go no farther.

The doors were no larger than any other elevator doors that you might see in an average apartment building. But they radiated so much power that Percy could understand why the monsters were staying so far away from it.

Finally, he spied the problem, there were extremely thick chains restraining the doors to the ground, and they shook violently with every group of monsters that went up.

If he could just get close enough to cut those chains and jump in the elevator than he would be okay. But as it was, that was impossible.

A large titan guarded the doors. One that he had never seen before but recognised all the same.

 _Koios._

Percy knew that if he revealed himself now he would be killed and it would be over.

He briefly wondered if his soul would even go to the Underworld if he died down here.

But then he spotted a familiar face among the crowd.

 _Moros_

The monsters let him pass, and he walked straight up to Koios,

Percy was too far away to hear what was being said, but whatever it was did not make Koios happy.

He roared and slapped Moros across the face.

"You imbecile! He is just a half-blood and you let him _escape_!".

"Watch your place, titan. I should not have to remind you that I am a primordial god, and you are just one of Gaea's discarded children".

"Yes, as you keep reminding me, and yet I have yet to see any of these primordial powers you claim to have".

Koios spit his words at Moros, and that seemed to be the last straw.

Both grew into what Percy imagined were their true forms. They looked to be evenly matched, but Percy could feel the raw power radiating off of Moros and knew that in a real fight, it wouldn't be a question who would win.

Nevertheless, Koios and Moros marched away to the center of a mob of cheering monsters.

The elevator dinged again, but nobody seemed to notice.

Looking around, Percy knew that this was his best chance to get out without being seen.

Still, it wasn't ideal. A lot of the monsters were completely occupied on the fight, but not all of them, there was still a hefty number of various monsters standing near the doors.

Slowly creeping off the hellhound's back, he creeped around in the shadows until he was just behind the doors.

The chains were large and thick, and it took a big swing of his sword to break them.

They finally snapped with a loud clang, and all the heads of every monster in the area looked over.

Stepping into the light, Percy allowed them to see him head-on.

"It's the half-blood!"

"Get him!"

Percy slashed and swung his way through too many monsters to count, completely caking himself with yellow dust.

But he didn't get away unscathed, a particularly brutal whack with some sort of club in his stomach knocked all the air out of him, forcing him to his knees as he frantically tried to draw something back into his lungs.

The monster stood above him, some sort of cyclops, and smiled wickedly, raising his club above his head for the final strike.

Percy didn't have enough time to raise his sword to protect himself, the only thing he could do was the thing that he swore to never do again.

He took control of the monster's blood, paralysing it and taking the extra time it provided to get to his feet again.

The cyclops' eye was wide with terror, and the rest of the monsters around them just stared.

With one clench of his fist, the monster exploded and he turned around to face the others, revelling in the feeling of power that came whenever he did this.

They tried to run, but he wouldn't let them, killing them all one by one until only one monster remained.

"What is going on on the surface?". The monster, a dracanae was paralysed with fear and didn't speak.

"What did they do to my friends?!", he yelled, more forcefully this time, slowly twisting his hand until it cried out in pain.

Percy was aware of every drop of water within its being, from the sweat dripping down the side of its scaly face to the water making up the blood that pumped through it veins.

This feeling of absolute power, exhilarated him, and he smiled. Not his usual mischievous I'm-up-to-no-good smile, but a darker one, more sinister. One that made the monster blanch in terror.

"The giants— the giants have captured them. They will be kept until the Earth Mother rises", she just managed to stammer out.

She looked into his eyes for mercy, but there was none.

With a clench of his fist she disintegrated and he ran to the now unchained doors.

Judging by the screams and yells of encouragement, the battle was almost over; he didn't have much time.

 _The giants had captured them._

He let that fact sink in before whistling to his hellhound and calling it over.

There would be a battle, and having a hellhound under his command in that battle would be very helpful.

The doors of death were just closing behind him when he saw the triumphant face of Moros emerge from the crowd of monsters. Only to turn into a mask of rage as he saw Percy within the closing elevator.

He ran towards him, but it was too late, the doors had already closed, and he was on his way up.

Finally, _finally_ after what felt like years he was on his way home.

He collapsed to the ground, his exhaustion finally hitting him as the adrenaline from the battle wore off.

The ground rumbled beneath his feet as the elevator climbed and climbed and climbed, time passed, but he had no idea how long it took.

His exhaustion took over, and his eyes closed as the rumbling of the elevator lulled him to sleep.

—-

Fresh hope coursed through the group of demigods stuck in the cage, and a plan began to form in Jason's mind.

"Leo! Can you melt the bars and make a hole for us to escape through?".

Jason didn't know why he hadn't thought of it before. It seemed so obvious!

Leo nodded and began work on the bars while the others sat around him and tried to block the monsters' view of what he was doing.

Looking around, Jason made eye contact with Annabeth.

There was a small amount of fear in her eyes, but for the most part she looked angry. And alternated between glaring at her captors and looking at Jason with a face that clearly said "get me out of here".

He nodded and pointed almost imperceptibly towards Nico, who was hiding behind the doors ready to press the button at any moment.

It dinged, and everybody got quiet, before any of the monsters could react Nico slammed the button and all Hades broke loose.


	7. Chapter 7

**POV: Percy**

Percy was awoken from his exhausted sleep from the jolting of the elevator as it landed and then stopped.

Getting wearily to his feet, he patted his hellhound on its massive head and tried to shake himself out of his fatigued stupor.

Judging from the sounds outside the door, the monster army was still out there, and they would not be happy to see him.

The adrenaline from his battle to get to the doors in Tartarus had worn off, but he felt as if something inside of him had broken when he used those powers. Something that couldn't be fixed.

A loud ding resounded, and moments later, the doors opened, blinding him with the sudden sunlight.

His hellhound bounded out, obviously happy to be out of Tartarus. Percy followed, still blinking rapidly at the brightness of the surface.

When he could see again, he became aware of what was happening all at once.

The entire monster army was staring at him in shock, and his friends looked to be stuck in a cage trying to cover for Leo who was burning a hole in the side of it.

"What are you waiting for fools? Attack!"

A war cry came from the army and they all surged forward.

He uncapped Riptide and got into an attack stance. Whistling to his hellhound, he called it over to him and jumped on top, telling it to attack.

The army crashed into him like a wave and he ripped his way through it, his sword swinging at the speed of lightening. But one thing bugged his mind.

When he had looked over at his friends, he hadn't seen Annabeth among them, or Nico for that matter.

Adrenaline coursed through him just as it had when he had fought his way to the doors in Tartarus, and in a moment's glance he made eye contact with Jason.

Jason nodded his head towards a group of big cyclops. And that's when Percy noticed something that he had looked over before.

Annabeth was at the foot of a big cyclops' chair, and he was stroking her like she was some sort of animal.

Anger flared in the pit of his stomach as he saw the cyclops pull on her hair as she tried to run away.

"Don't touch her!"

A wave of pure energy rolled off of him, immediately vaporising any monsters nearby, and creating an invisible barrier between the remaining army and their general. Isolating the group of cyclops that had Annabeth from their protection.

A sneer once again took over the cyclops' face and he held up Annabeth in the air by her hair.

She cried out in pain and tried to get away but to know avail.

"Who? Her? What are you going to do about it half-blood?".

The thing spit out the word as if it tasted bad.

His sneer was wiped off of his face as the ground beneath him began to shake.

Percy held out his hand and grasped control of the cyclops' blood. It's eyes widened as it realized what he was doing.

He forced the cyclops to drop Annabeth and she collapsed onto the ground in a heap, before scrambling to her feet and running out of its reach.

Percy's gaze swept the room and landed on one of the smaller cyclops behind his general. It's eyes widened in recognition.

"You", it snarled.

"Me". He smiled, but it was darker, and sent a chill through the room.

His general turned to him.

"Who is this half-blood. How do you know him?"

"Who's son are you?". The general turned, once again addressing Percy.

Before Percy could answer the smaller cyclops answered for him.

"Darkness. Son of darkness. Slayer of Moros".

The creature began to back away with wide eyes.

Throughout this explanation Percy had taken steps forward until he was now standing right in front of the general.

Percy raised his arm, focusing on the monster's blood. He willed it all outward towards him, and with a clench of his fist the monster disintegrated.

"Now... Who wants to go next?".

Percy turned, looking each remaining monster in its eyes (or eye).

They shuddered, and then a moment later the entire cavern was cleared save for he, his friends, and the piles of golden dust which used to be monsters.

He shuddered, and then sank to his knees, completely and utterly exhausted.

—

 **POV: Frank**

When Percy came out of that elevator everything was quiet. The entire army stared at him, shocked.

He looked like crap. His usually tan skin was ghostly pale, and his hair was overgrown and dirty, clumped together with grease.

But the thing that really made Frank wince were the scars. They were all pink and red, like they had just been made (which he supposed they had).

He had the remains of his shirt wrapped around his midsection, and dried blood stained it from what must have been a nasty injury.

They were odd, though. The skin around them was aggravated too, and the edges of the scar were puckered, almost as though they had been burned shut.

Frank shuddered as he thought about what must have happened to him down there.

He didn't have long to think about it, though, as the entire army shook themselves awake and rushed at him as one.

"No!", Frank yelled though he doubted anybody could hear him. There was no way that Percy would survive.

He turned to Leo, "Are you almost done? Percy needs our help out there".

There were only a few bars left to melt, but Frank knew that Percy didn't have that long. He was forced to watch from his cage.

But the inevitable didn't happen. Percy wasn't killed. In fact, he killed them. He left a trail of destruction in his wake as Riptide cut through the army so fast Frank thought he was dreaming.

Occasionally he would hold out a bare hand and the monster he pointed it at would explode. But that wasn't possible.

 _Was it?_

Whenever he could, Percy looked across the room at them in the cage. Or more accurately, Jason.

They must have been communicating across the room, because suddenly Percy's eyes suddenly snapped away from them, and directly at Annabeth.

It was disgusting, the cyclops were petting her like she was some sort of animal. To her credit she fought back, occasionally landing a good kick or two, but without her knife and in chains there wasn't much she could do.

Frank's blood boiled with anger, and Percy must have felt the same way, as even from across the room, across the battle he could see his eyes darken and hear what he said.

"Don't touch her!".

A wave of energy seemed to emanate from inside of him, and the area around him and the cyclops holding Annabeth became fuzzing.

At a certain point when monsters would advance, they would explode, and the rest of them soon got the message. An invisible shimmering wall now separated the army and their commander, and they were forced to watch from the outside in as Percy advanced towards him.

He moved slowly, almost like a predator.

The general's eye widened in fear before he covered it up with a sneer a split second later.

He held up Annabeth by her hair, as if showing Percy some sort of prize that he had taken.

Percy held out an arm and it shook, as if it was holding up some sort of invisible weight.

Then the strangest thing happened, the general stiffened and he dropped Annabeth on the ground. She ran out of reach, but Percy's gaze was still focused on the cyclops with pure rage in his eyes.

His gaze seemed to sweep throughout the room, taking it in for the first time since he emerged. It landed on a smaller cyclops that was right behind the general.

"You". The cyclops tried its best to snarl menacingly, but Frank could still hear the fear in its voice.

"Me". Percy smiled, a wide smile that wasn't his. It seemed sort of unhinged, and it made a shiver run down Frank's spine.

At that moment, the general got his voice back, and he addressed the cyclops behind him.

"Who is this half-blood? How do you know him?".

The general's eye switched as much as he could between Percy and the other cyclops. It was as though he was stuck and held there by some sort of invisible force.

"Who's son are you?", he addressed Percy now.

Percy smiled again, and opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, the cyclops who had apparently recognised him spoke first.

"Darkness. Son of darkness. Slayer of Moros".

It's voice wavered slightly, and it backed away from Percy in fear, but what it had said confused Frank even more.

 _Slayer of Moros? As in the primordial Moros?_

Percy was now standing right in front of the general, his arm was still extended in front of him, and it shook even more now, as if it was beginning to tire.

With a dark grin, Percy twisted his hand, and the general cried out in pain. He clenched his fist, and the general exploded from within, its last cry of anguish echoing throughout the cavern.

There was silence. Nobody dared speak or even breathe. Frank was still in shock at what he had just seen Percy do, and he could see Annabeth across the cavern, with her hands over her mouth and tears in her eyes.

Percy turned around, the grin gone from his face, and addressed the crowd of monsters.

The invisible wall that had separated them disappeared, and Frank could see Percy drooping in exhaustion, but his voice was still strong and held plenty of malice.

"Who wants to go next?".

The monsters stared at him, wide eyed. The words 'son of darkness' echoed around the cavern as if it were a mantra that was being chanted.

All at once there was a stampede towards the exit, and the cavern was completely clear of monsters in just over five minutes.

The only thing left behind was one hellhound, and Percy and his friends.

As soon as the monsters were gone and they were safe, Percy slumped to the ground.

"Percy!", Annabeth ran over to him, and Frank and the others who were still in the cage crawled out of the newly created hole and joined her.

What they saw when they got there was more confusing than anything Frank had seen that day.

There, slumped over on his knees on the ground, was Percy Jackson, and he was crying.

Tears rolled down his grime covered face. They were silent, he did not sob, did not make a sound. He just cried. And everybody watched him, unsure of what to do.

Annabeth rushed forward and embraced him, crying tears of her own into the crook of his neck.

Even Frank was starting to get a little emotional. Percy was back. He'd actually done it. He'd actually survived Tartarus. _Alone_.

Finally, after who knew how long, Percy struggled up to his feet and spoke.

"Where are we?".

His voice was different, scratchy, and hoarser than Frank remembered. Like he'd been gargling acid.

"The House of Hades. In Epirus Greece".

Percy nodded at Nico, taking in this information.

"We should get back to the ship", he finally said.

As they walked back through the tunnels, everybody kept casting wary looks back at Percy.

He hadn't spoken much since he had emerged. And there was something in his eyes, some sort of painful sadness that scared them.

 _What had happened to him down there?"._


	8. Chapter 8

When the group finally emerged from the maze in the Necromanteion, Percy stopped short in his tracks.

Everybody turned and looked at him in confusion. He had stopped, mid-step. He stood facing the sun with his eyes closed.

One more tear slipped down his cheek, but this time it was accompanied by a smile, a genuine one, one that he hadn't made in a long time.

"Percy? Are you okay?", Annabeth asked gently.

He opened his eyes and seemed to realise for the first time that everybody was waiting for him.

"Sorry. I haven't seen the sun in a long time".

His words silenced the quiet conversation that had begun between the crew since they had left the cavern.

Percy closed his eyes again, taking a deep breath of fresh air.

He never thought that he would get to smell the scent of sea salt off the water again. The scent of blood down in Tartarus was completely overpowering, and it was all that Percy ever thought that he would smell again.

Once he was ready, the group continued on, hiking back down the hill and climbing aboard the Argo II.

Leo retreated away from the main group to begin guiding the ship back to New York, letting the others say their hellos.

The girls and Frank all had tears in their eyes as they each gave him a hug.

Frank's hug made his wounds scream in protest, but he ignored them and squeezed back just as fiercely. He had missed his friends immensely, and never thought that he'd be able to see them again.

Last in line was Annabeth, his wise girl.

They looked each other in the eye for a few moments before rushing together. Percy brought her mouth to his and nothing else mattered.

He didn't care about the hoots and hollers that his friends made, or the disgusted sound that Leo made over the intercom after seeing what they had done over the cameras.

All he cared about was that he had his wise girl back, and he was never going to let anything get in between them ever again. Because when Moros had shown him Annabeth's destiny, that singular moment when he had seen Annabeth murdered right in front of his eyes. Even though it wasn't real, and even though he held her in his arms now, that still was, and always will be the worst moment of his entire life.

When they finally separated, they left their foreheads touching, and their chests heaved in rhythm with one another.

"All right. Break it up you two!", Jason said, stepping in between them and throwing Percy a grin.

"Yeah, come on, Percy. We have to go get you cleaned up in the infirmary", Piper said, grabbing his arm and trying to pull him away.

"No, no. I'm fine. I don't need to go to the infirmary".

They all looked at him incredulously.

"Dude, you just got out of _Tartarus_. Of course you need to go to the infirmary", Jason said.

But Percy didn't listen, and gently pried his arm from Piper's grasp.

"I can take care of myself", he insisted, giving Annabeth one last peck on the cheek before turning towards his cabin.

"But Percy-".

"I said I can take care of myself!".

They were shocked and a little bit hurt at his outburst, and Percy's face immediately showed regret and guilt.

He came back towards them a few steps, guilt in his eyes. "Look, guys. I'm sorry. But don't worry about me. I'll be fine".

He flashed them one of his signature lopsided grins, but Annabeth wasn't convinced.

He wasn't fine, he wasn't okay, and he couldn't take care of himself. Not after all that he had been through.

But she decided to give him some space. Smothering him would just make him angry.

 _And besides, he'll come to realise it himself given a few days._

The others had already accepted his apology, and with that reasoning in her mind she, too, nodded her head in forgiveness.

He smiled once more before turning around and entering his cabin, closing the door behind him.

As soon as the cabin door shut behind him, Percy dropped the façade and broke down.

His entire body ached, and he no longer held off the shaking in his muscles from fatigue.

He stumbled his way over to his bed before collapsing. He couldn't let the others see him like this, he just couldn't. He had to be strong, to be the leader that he had been before.

Gathering his strength, he stumbled over to the bathroom and took a shower.

What remained of his shirt peeled off of his skin, stuck there with dried blood. The wound had opened up again, and was bleeding.

The shower water cascaded off of him, turning red and black with grime and blood.

When he emerged, he definitely felt better. The water had given him energy that he hadn't had in a long time, and he felt refreshed.

He held a small towel to the still bleeding part of his wound, and walked over back into his room to where he had dumped his stuff.

His water bottle, now almost dissolved from the heat and potency of the river water, still had some of the Phlegethon water in it.

He walked over, picked it up, and laid down on his good side on the floor of his cabin.

Unscrewing the bottle, he poured out some of the fiery liquid, and it splashed onto his open wound with a hiss and sizzling sound. It began to close, but Percy had to bite his tongue painfully to keep from crying out.

Instead, low groans filled his cabin, and the smell of burning flesh, a smell he had hoped to never smell again, filled his nostrils.

When the wound had completely closed, he stopped pouring gratefully, and set the almost empty water bottle on the ground next to him.

He lay there, panting and catching his breath for a while before he examined the new scar.

It still looked angry and red, and the edges were puckered unevenly from the heat, but it had closed completely, and hopefully wouldn't open again.

He mopped up any excess fire water and blood with the now scorched rag, and got dressed.

He was completely, and utterly, exhausted. And he felt as though he could probably sleep for the entire trip back to New York.

But at the same time, he knew what would be coming if he fell asleep.

He was out of Tartarus, but he'd never really be out. His nightmares would taunt him about it for the rest of his life.

He lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling. But eventually he couldn't keep his eyes open anymore and he fell asleep.

 _Running. Running. Always running._

 _They were gaining on him. He knew they wouldn't hesitate to rip him apart, piece by piece._

 _And then what would happen? Would his soul go to Elysium? Or would it just stay down here, stuck for all of eternity._

 _He looked back. Big mistake._

 _They were right on top of him and his legs were tiring. He couldn't keep this up for much longer, there had to be somewhere in this gods forsaken canyon that he could hide._

 _There._

 _A cave. Higher ground._

 _Climbing. Blood rushing through his ears so fast that he could barely hear the sounds of their barking underneath him._

 _But they couldn't get him, he was safe up high._

 _Wrong._

 _An almighty ripping sound and he was knocked completely off of the wall save for one hand._

 _It took him a few moments to realise that that ripping sound of his own flesh. Flesh that was now hanging off of him in strips._

 _Then the pain hit._

 _Pain, pain, pain, pain, pain._

 _His mind chanted it like a mantra. He could focus on nothing else._

 _By some sort of miracle he managed to fling himself into the cave and collapse onto the floor._

 _Screaming._

 _Nothing could make it stop. Nothing could make it go away._

 _There was blood forming a puddle underneath where he lay on the ground. His blood._

 _Too much, too much was on the ground instead of inside of him._

 _His vision started to go dark._

"Percy! Percy, wake up!", someone screamed in his ear, shaking him violently by the shoulders.

He was still lost in between the nightmare and reality, and the movement caused him to scream in utter and absolute suffering.

 _Pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain._

"I'm sorry, Annabeth. I'm sorry I can't keep my promise".

"No, Percy! No! We rescued you! You're okay now".

He went still.

There were tears in Annabeth's eyes now and she slapped him across the face.

"No! You don't get to leave me like that!".

His eyes cracked open, he was still breathing abnormally fast, and he was drenched in his own sweat. But he was still alive. Still alive and out of Tartarus.

Once Annabeth saw that he was awake she flung herself on top of him and cried. The others who had come into the room alerted by his screams just stared at him with various emotions on their faces.

But the most common one was horror.

Annabeth tore herself away from Percy and stood up, giving him some room to breathe.

His eyes darted nervously around the crowded room, alert.

They stared at him, not speaking until he had recovered and was breathing at a normal rate again.

His scar still ached with remnants of his nightmare, and he stood up, his fingers absently tracing the jagged edges.

The crew was all still gathered in his room, staring at him as if he was some sort of pitiful creature on the side of the road.

His eyes hardened. "What are you guys doing in here?".

They visibly flinched.

"You were screaming and yelling. We thought that something was attacking you", Jason said, more brave than the others and stepping forward.

"Percy… Did you— Did you die in Tartarus?", Piper asked, stepping forward to stand next to Jason.

He looked confused, "What? No. Why would you ask that?".

"It's just… You kept screaming in pain, and then you said that you couldn't keep your promise to Annabeth anymore and that you were sorry, and then you went completely still. Like you—Like you had died".

The crew stared at Percy, obviously all thinking the same thing that she had.

When Percy finally answered his voice was quiet and his eyes were unfocused, like he was somewhere else.

"No… No, I didn't die".

He tore his hand away from the scar that he had been rubbing suddenly, and walked out of his room.

"So! Where are we?". His voice was chirpy and his signature lopsided grin was back on his face.

The sudden switch alarmed the crew and nobody answered, just stared.

Another tear ran down Annabeth's face, and Hazel just shook her head.

Surprising everybody, Nico spoke up.

"We're about a day or two outside of New York. You've been asleep for a while".

Percy looked over at the younger boy and gave a grateful nod before turning and walking out onto the deck.

It was mid afternoon, and the sun was shining. They were flying, not wanting to encounter any unwanted sea monsters, and the Atlantic below them was a beautiful blue.

Percy stood in the centre of the deck with his eyes closed and face tilted towards the sun.

The others climbed out right behind him, still eyeing him warily.

Leo went back to the helm of the ship, and Nico never came onto the deck, instead turning around and going back to his cabin.

But all the others gathered behind him, concern in their eyes.

Percy's eyes were still closed, but the peaceful expression was gone from his face.

"Percy?", Piper asked, stepping forward and touching his arm.

Before they could ask him if he was okay, he spoke.

"I was being chased by a pack of hellhounds".

Nobody spoke, knowing how hard it was for Percy to tell them.

His face was twisted, and his eyes were still closed as he told them what had happened.

"It was this big… canyon. And there were caves in the walls that I used to hide in".

"I was climbing up the wall to get to higher ground. But they were too close. One of them jumped up, and-and caught me around my waist".

He took a shuddering breath, and his hand went to his scar again.

"When it fell back down again it— it, uh, ripped through me".

His face contorted in pain, but his eyes were still closed.

"The pain, was, unimaginable. I don't know how but I managed to get myself into the cave. I was on the ground, slowly bleeding out. I didn't think that I was going to make it. My vision kept going in and out, but I managed to somehow pour some Phlegethon water on it before I completely blacked out".

He tore his hand away from he scar as if it burned him.

His eyes opened, and he hurriedly wiped at the tears that had fallen down his cheeks as he turned to face the rest of the group.

"That's what I was reliving".

Annabeth rushed forward and gave him a tight hug. It hurt, but Percy didn't mind.

Her hair smelled like lemons, and he tucked his chin on top of her head as he hugged her back.

The others came over, hugging him, or simply patting him on the back and saying comforting things.

When they pulled away, he _did_ feel better. But he still had to get away, if only for a little while.

"I'm going to go for a swim. Okay? I just… I need to clear my head".

They nodded and Annabeth gave him a sad smile.

"Leo! Can you lower-", before she could finish Percy had already climbed onto the edge of the deck and jumped off.

"Percy!".

They all ran to the edge and looked over just as a large column of water shot up and caught him mid-dive.

He didn't come up, but they all knew he was fine.

"Seaweed Brain", Annabeth muttered to herself with a small smile.


	9. Chapter 9

Percy sat on the bottom of the ocean, the light around him being filtered and distorted by the blueness of the water.

A curious great white swam by, but he just batted it on the nose and it swam away.

The ocean was always able to calm him down and let him clear his mind.

The gentle currents swept around him, and he manipulated them so that they carried him beneath the Argo II as it continued on its journey.

He breathed a sigh of content and closed his eyes, but winced when a flash of his nightmare came back to him like lightening.

For a millisecond it was there, for a millisecond the sounds and smells of Tartarus surrounded him and he was back. Back in that horrible place.

But then it went away, his eyes flashed open, but all he saw around him were the calming blue and green colours of the ocean.

His heart was beating rather quickly, but a voice interrupted his thoughts before he could allow himself to fall into a panic attack.

"Are you okay, Lord?".

He started and looked over his shoulder to find a hippocampi staring at him with large concerned eyes.

"Yeah... yeah, I'm fine".

He shook his head, clearing his head of the images that still flooded them.

The hippocampi still had not left, preferring instead swim a little closer and settle next to him.

He patted its muzzle and neck affectionately as he thought.

It still hadn't fully sunk in to him yet that he had escaped. That there was no more fire and burning, no more running.

The hippocampi bucked slightly beside him.

" _Your ship is getting away, Lord. Would you like a ride?"_

Percy looked up to find that he was right. The Argo II was beginning to disappear in the distance. Through all his thinking he had gotten distracted and let the current dissipate.

He nodded and smiled at the hippocampi.

"Yes, thank you".

Riding through the water and the waves was pure freedom. The water of the Atlantic was cold, but Percy hardly felt anything.

They rushed through the water, the hippocampus' muscles tending and moving below him and powering them through the water with great speed.

Since he had gone underwater, the Argo II has come lower so that it was now resting in the water.

The crew was on deck, milling about and doing various things.

They were interrupted when something shot out of the water like a cannonball with a joyful yell.

It was Percy. The hippocampus has powered him towards the surface and he had jumped from there, using it like a springboard.

He jumped from the water and landed smoothly on the deck with a roll, a grin so wide on his face it looked like it would split in half.

"Seaweed Brain!".

He looked over to see Annabeth glaring at him, dripping from head to toe with seawater.

"Sorry".

He waved a hand and she was instantly dried.

Feeding a sugar cube to his new friend, he listened for a while before turning to Leo.

"There's something coming at the ship. Can you get us into the air?".

He hurried to the helm and the ship shot into the air minutes before a large monster shot out of the water and snapped its jaws just a few feet from the ship.

Percy was still smiling, a ridiculous grin plastered on his face.

The large monster landed in the water with a large splash that reached all the way up to the ship.

Percy was standing at the end of the ship, holding on to the ropes and leaning over the edge and just laughing as the seaspray hit his face.

He was free. Finally, actually free.

In that moment, when the sea was all around him and his mind was completely clear of visions, he was happy.

Genuinely happy.

For the first time in a long time.

After they had risen up high enough that the water from the ocean no longer reached them, Percy climbed down back onto the normal deck and turned to face his friends who were all staring at him uneasily.

"Percy, are you okay?".

Annabeth came forward and put the back on her hand to his forehead. He just batted it away.

"I'm fine. What's wrong?".

"If you have special brownies hidden somewhere around here or something you'll share next time, right?".

Leo's voice cracked over the intercom, but the smile was still easily discernible.

"Special brownies? I don't have any special brownies. I'm just happy to be free, that's all".

His smile was gone off his face, flickering to a frown of confusion before finally settling on his usual resting brooding look.

They shrugged their shoulders and walked off, back to their own individual activities, leaving him standing on the deck with only Annabeth.

She smiled at him, and his spirits immediately lifted.

"You're okay now?".

He nodded his head and brought her up for a kiss.

 _3 Days Later:_

The trip to New York was mostly filled with Percy sleeping.

Sleeping was generally a painful experience for all of them, as Percy's nightmares were horrible and showed no signs of fading.

During them, his powers would react violently with his emotions, and huge waves and storms would crash against the side of the ship.

Because of this they were forced to fly most of the way, only dipping down again when they had to pick up Percy from the ocean where he went to calm down.

Land was just newly visible on the horizon when a meeting was called.

They had delayed it for as long as possible in order to give Percy a chance to recover, and it had worked.

He no longer looked as though he were about to keel over at any second. And some of his colour had returned, though he was still much tanner than before.

Piper had insisted on giving him a hair cut, so his hair no longer covered half his face and had been washed so it was back to its usual surprising softness.

The only thing that he still hadn't allowed his friends to do was treat his wounds. He insisted upon doing it himself. Even when they had confronted him with a scorched and bloodied rag they found in the garbage.

The crew filed into the Mess Hall for the meeting. Everybody but Percy knew what it was about.

They each wandered in, each person sitting in their usual seat with Percy at the head. They had taken over that practice again almost as soon as he had returned.

"So… What's up?". Percy faced Annabeth, as she was the one who had called the meeting, as well as normally running all of the others.

"Percy, there's something we didn't tell you when you came back up from Tartarus".

He narrowed his eyes. "What?".

"The two demigod camps… they haven't stopped fighting".

Everybody looked at him cautiously, since he had returned, he had been known to have an even shorter temper than he'd had before he went down, the only person capable of calming him down when he was worked up being Annabeth. And that only worked sometimes.

"What?".

His voice was quiet, and the water bottle at the center of the table shook.

Annabeth took his hand, and he stayed tense for two slow seconds before relaxing.

"Why? I thought you guys went back to stop them before you came to get me".

He looked genuinely curious now, and the others seemed to recover their voices.

"We tried. We really did. They wouldn't listen to us! The Greeks were ready to stand down, but the stupid Romans weren't", Hazel said, meeting his eyes and imploring him to understand.

" _Octavian"_.

They nodded their heads and his scowl grew.

 _That boy was getting on his last nerves._

Percy thought about it for a moment, his gaze moving to meet each of the crew's.

"So what… They've been fighting each other this entire time?".

Annabeth shook her head. "No. We managed to stop that from happening".

Piper scoffed. "We? You is more like it. Your girlfriend here is very persuasive".

Percy looked around in confusion. "I don't understand. You said that they hadn't stopped fighting, but at the same time they haven't fought yet?".

"We managed to buy eight days. Reyna requested eight days for us to bring back something as proof of the war. They don't believe that it exists".

Percy shook his head as he absorbed this information. "I'm sorry guys. I really thought that Reyna would be able to convince them. I guess I was wrong".

"No, no. Because of Reyna and Annabeth they aren't already fighting. They were about to when we got back the first time. But thanks to them we had a little bit of time".

"Eight days? How long ago was that?".

"Seven days ago". Annabeth's voice was solemn, and he could see that she was just as worried about the fast approaching deadline as he now was.

"Guys relax. We'll be there in four hours tops", Leo said, holding out his hands.

He stood up to go back to the helm and direct the trip.

"I'll see what I can do about speeding up this baby", he patted the doorframe before ducking out of the room.

A couple of minutes later, the noise of the engines increased, and so did their speed.

Annabeth's hand slipped out of his as she went to stand up and leave.

"Wait. You said that you had to bring back proof. What other proof besides the Athena Parthenos could you get?".

They looked at each other.

"You. You were our proof. We thought that you could convince them".

They looked at him hopefully, but his eyes darkened.

"You want me to tell them about Tartarus to convince them".

They nodded their heads apprehensively, but he just stood up and walked out onto the deck.

He heard the crew behind him sigh.

"See. I told you he wouldn't like it".

Shutting out their voices, he looked to the water far below him.

It was a beautiful blue, and yet strangely flat and calm, like it was running on autopilot.

He supposed it was. His father along with all of the other gods was conflicted between his Greek and Roman forms. He would be too weak to control the ocean right now.

Still, he missed it. The unruly waves and its inability to be tamed was what he always liked the most about the ocean. It reminded him of how he felt sometimes.

Growing steadily larger on the horizon, he could see camp. The cabins just specks, but still there. He'd never been more happy to see something in his life.

No, that was wrong. His reunion with Annabeth was far better than this.

 _Annabeth._

He sighed. He supposed he should go and apologise for walking out of the meeting.

Just as he was turning to go, she appeared behind him.

"Hey".

"Hey. I was just about to come find you".

She nodded her head and her hand found its way to the small of his back.

He shivered slightly at the contact to his old mortal point.

She would run slow circles there whenever she needed to calm him down. Today was no different.

He immediately relaxed under her touch and turned to give her a grateful smile.

"You okay?".

He nodded, turning his gaze back towards the water.

"I will be".

They stayed together, not saying anything, just enjoying each other's presence.

Soon enough, they had arrived at the camp.

Something was wrong, though. The cabins weren't being used and there was nobody walking around.

"Where is everybody?".

The rest of the crew came out onto the deck and stared equally as puzzled down at the camp below them.

Then Percy saw them. The entire camp was gathered in full battle armor surrounding half-blood hill.

On the opposite side was Camp Jupiter, equally prepared for battle.

They didn't seem to be attacking each other, but both defending against something.

A pack of hellhounds, no doubt sent by Tartarus in revenge for Percy's escape, we're closing in.

The two camps stayed distinctly separate, still not working together.

But at least they weren't fighting as they looked like they had been about to be.

Leading the Greeks, Percy could see a figure with a glowing red spear who could only be Clarisse.

The pack advanced, their menacing growls heard even from up on the Argo II.

The leader of the pack was holding eye contact with Clarisse, but judging from the others' positions, they were getting ready to attack.

The rest of the crew spotted the threat just as the shadow of the ship passed over the camper's heads.

Percy could tell that they'd never have enough time to descend before they attacked, and he confirmed his thoughts when he saw Clarisse break eye contact and look up at the passing ship.

The hellhounds' muscles tensed and it lunged forward along with the rest of its pack.

Before Percy could think otherwise, he jumped over the railing of the still descending ship and landed on the ground on one knee in front of the advancing pack of hellhounds.

Pain, shot through his leg, but he ignored it, the thoughts of saving his friends and camp overpowering it.

The hellhounds stopped in confusion at the new intrusion, as did the rest of the camps.

But soon they had recovered their wits and were growling and snarling again.

"Stop".

His voice was low and powerful, and caused the hellhounds to stop in their tracks.

"Percy, are you crazy?!".

Annabeth was screaming at him from the deck of the ship, but he just turned around and grinned.

At the broken eye contact, the hellhound lunged forward in attack, but he punched it in the nose before it could bite him.

"Man, you have a strong nose!", Percy said, shaking his hand at the wrist.

The hellhound just glared at him, the fire that was in place of its eye burning brighter and with more intensity.

"Here's how this is going to work. You serve us now, understand?".

His voice took on the same gravelly menacing tone it had while he was in Tartarus.

The two locked eyes, the hellhounds fire dying down slightly before it took a step back and bowed.

One of the smaller ones behind it growled at him still, and he threw a spare dagger at it from his belt in a flash, crumbling it to dust.

"Would anybody else like to complain? Or should I just go get your mother?".

The other hellhounds quickly followed suit, leaning back and bowing their massive heads.

"Good".

The area around them was now so silent that you could hear a pin drop, and the intense fire was still burning in his eyes when Percy turned to face the two camps.

"Hello. I'm back, Tartarus was great, thanks for asking", a shadow of his old grin appeared on his face, but the darkness remained in his eyes.

A low growl from behind him made him turn back to face the pack.

They were still bowing, and obviously didn't appreciate it.

He waved a hand and they straightened, still glaring at him.

He patted the largest one on its muzzle and scratched behind its ears like Mrs. O'Leary likes.

"So what's this I hear about the two camps fighting?".

He asked after a stretched moment of silence.

The Argo II now hovered above the camp, and the rest of his friends joined him after climbing down the rope ladder.

"Three days out of Tartarus and I have to come and break up some little fight? Come on guys, we have bigger problems".

He remained cold and casual, but the campers just stared at him.

Finally, they moved.

All the Greek campers put their weapons down on the ground, followed reluctantly by the Ares Cabin.

He nodded to them gratefully, and turned his gaze to the Romans.

"So the traitor returns!".

Octavian spoke at him from the crowd of Romans, dressed in his own armor and weapons.

Percy sent him a withering glare, and the other demigods around Octavian immediately stepped away.

"What did you just call me?".

His voice was tight and sharp with restrained anger, and every cell in the other campers' body told them to run.

"You heard me, graeci".

He could see Clarisse boiling with anger, and he was too, but he held up a hand to calm her down.

"I am not a traitor", Percy said quietly, his voice carrying over the silence.

"I left on a quest to stop Gaea from rising".

Percy's eyes were still locked on Octavian, but he didn't back down.

"So we've heard from your little friends here", Octavian sneered over Percy's shoulder where the rest of the crew was standing, making the anger in the pit of Percy's stomach grow larger.

The earth rumbled beneath them.

"Do not disrespect my friends".

The hellhounds behind him got antsy, and the leader pushed its nose against Percy's back.

"Or what, traitor?".

Octavian was now standing in a circle all by himself, as all of the other demigods around him had retreated sensing the anger rolling off of the crew of the Argo II.

The storms that Percy and Jason could create when working together were terrifying, especially now that Percy had more control over his connection to the earth.

One was brewing now, and the campers looked at the sky in nervousness as dark clouds began to gather overhead and the wind picked up. Waves could be heard even from where they stood on the opposite side of camp crashing violently into the shore.

The grass in the empty circle surrounding Octavian died, and small gems began to sprout from the earth around him as the two children of Hades/Pluto combined their powers.

But by far the scariest thing was what Percy did.

He laughed.

It was low and rumbled across the field, making everybody's hairs stand on end.

The brewing storms stopped suddenly, and the silence that followed was somehow even more terrifying.

"Or what?", Percy's grin was too wide and dark, almost maniacal, but his eyes gave away exactly how angry he was.

"Or I will show you exactly how I earned my respect in the pit. In _great_ detail".

Octavian blanched, but still managed to say one last thing.

"It is impossible to survive the pit! There is no way that you went down and back! We will never believe you".

Two half-bloods behind Octavian finally shut him up and pulled him back into the crowd simply to get him to stop talking, but it was too late, the Romans had the seed of doubt planted in their minds.

He managed to make himself look away from glaring at Octavian, and his gaze settled on Reyna.

"Reyna, the Athena Parthenos is up in the ship, it has to be returned by a Roman. Would you do us the honours?".

She nodded and mounted Scipio, urging him towards the Argo II, where Leo had already started to open the hatch doors to the stables.

Ropes were attached to key points on the statue and lead to Scipio and the Argo II.

Together, they lowered the statue until it was directly above Half Blood Hill.

With a snap, both ropes were cut and the statue was set on the ground.

Her unmoving cold eyes seemed to both protect them and judge them all at the same time.

An era of golden power was sent out like a wave throughout the camp's borders, making the magical barrier stronger.

The hellhounds behind him seemed to cower and back away at the statue, but Percy held up a hand and they stayed.

A cracking sound echoed through the air, accompanied by the smell of ozone and a blinding light that forced them all to shut their eyes.

When they opened them, they saw the Olympians in the middle of the two camps of demigods.

Everybody immediately bowed except for Percy, who just nodded in greeting.

Zeus looked surprised to see him at first before nodding back and addressing the rest of the campers, leaving demigods on both sides shocked.

"The Athena Parthenos has been returned. Peace can once again be restored between Greek and Roman".

The Greeks cheered, but the Romans just grumbled in discord. One voice in particular spoke out above the rest.

"We will never be at peace with these scum! They are nothing but lying traitors!".

There were shouts of agreement, except for the Fifth and some of the Fourth cohorts, who promptly walked away from the Roman ranks and joined the Greeks.

Percy's hellhound, who he had decided to name Shadow, growled at Octavian, picking up on his emotions.

It rumbled around the area and silenced the small squabbles that had broken out again.

"What else could you _possibly_ want us to give you to prove to you that this war is real?".

His frustration leaked into his voice making it sound hard and cold, and Shadow stood to his full height behind him with another growl.

Octavian's gaze flickered nervously to Shadow behind him, so Percy waved a hand.

"Stand down, boy. I've got this one", he huffed a breath over his shoulder, but sat back down on his haunches.

"There is no way that you survived Tartarus! Nobody survives Tartarus".

Octavian had a haughty look on his face that made Percy just want to punch him.

"Well obviously, that's changed. He's been down there, and he's standing right in front of you now", Annabeth shot back at him.

He sent her a grateful look and she nodded.

"We don't believe you. You lying scum are probably just faking it to trick us".

"Yeah! We want proof!", another Roman from behind him called.

By now his blood was boiling with anger and dark clouds began to gather overhead.

"Fine. You want proof? Here's your proof".

He pulled his shirt up and off over his head, exposing the many scars and burns that were all over his torso. Particularly the largest and newest one that wrapped all the way around his side and lower back.

One particular burn got the attention of everybody there: Nyx' blessing. It had been burned into his skin and was charred in her symbol.

It was in the shape of dark angel wings that spread out from the nape of his neck and all the way along his shoulders.

He threw his shirt to the ground beside him, fully exposing the mark that seemed to radiate sadness and power.

"Is this enough evidence for you?".

His voice was cold and he crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Octavian as if daring him to say anything.

Heat radiated off of the gash in his side, and he saw everybody's eyes traveling to it.

It was uneven and bumpy, and the entire area was covered with welts and blisters from the heat of the Phlegethon water.

It was still angry looking and red as it healed, and it formed a strange indentation in his side where his flesh once used to be.

His fists clenched and unclenched, the feeling of so many eyes on him at once starting to make him feel uncomfortable.

"W-what is that?", somebody finally asked from the Greek side.

"The blessing of Nyx, primordial goddess of Night. I- I did her a favor".

The demigods eyes widened and Zeus' head snapped up to meet him in the eyes.

"What have you done, boy?".

Anger and frustration coursed back through him. "I survived! In any way that I could. He was going to kill her! I had to... I had to...".

His hands were held out in front of them as if he had never seen them before, and he twisted his fingers testingly.

The more he thought about it, the more the new discovery of his power exhilarated him. And that was terrifying.

"Percy, what did you do?".

His father was looking at him with concern in his kind eyes, and Percy had to look away.

"He was going to kill Annabeth. Slit her throat on the stones I had to stop him".

Annabeth's eyes widened and she took a step back.

All his pent up emotions coursed through his veins like fire, making him just want to scream.

"What did you do to prove yourself to Lady Nyx?!", Zeus thundered again, obviously not pleased with being ignored.

"Did you know they call me son of darkness now, son of the nighttime. Nyx has never given her blessing to a mortal before".

Zeus met Percy's gaze and was somewhat terrified. His eyes were swirling and confused, but also cold and hard and dark. If there was a chance that Percy could release that power then they'd all be doomed.

"Yes... I know", Annabeth's mother was also watching Percy carefully and with new interest. "So why does she give it to you? What have you done for her?".

Percy remembered the sight of the primordial of doom and destiny on the ground in a puddle of his own ichor, the raw power that flowed through his veins when he stood over him. But also the painful cracking, like something inside him that could never be fixed had broken.

His resolve hardened and his eyes turned sharp as glass.

"I killed destiny... Well, almost. Nyx couldn't let one of her favorite sons die at the hands of a mortal now could she?".

He turned away from the group of staring gods and demigods and back towards Shadow.

The others in his pack were a little ways away, still glaring at our group, but Shadow seemed content.

"Do you remember Moros, boy?".

Shadow whimpered, but Percy scratched him behind his ear and his large tail wagged, thumping onto the ground and making it shake.

"That is not possible!", Zeus thundered from behind him.

"I hate to agree with my father but I do. It is impossible to kill an primordial, especially for a mortal".

Percy was about to answer when something happened.

A cloud of dark smoke began to come from the mark on his back, and a dark chuckle seemed to come from everywhere.

"Silly Olympians".

The voice was distinctly female, and Percy recognized it from his nightmares.

"My lady, Nyx".

Everybody's eyes widened when he addressed her, and watched the shadows anxiously.

"I unfortunately cannot come to you in person. I heard you were talking of me, my champion".

"Yes, my lady. I am trying to convince the camp's of the threat that Gaea poses. They did not believe that I survived Tartarus so I had to show them your mark".

"I hope I have not offended you".

The smoke spread out until a thin layer was covering all of the ground around their feet and her voice went with it.

"Yes, Yes. I remember you telling me about Gaea rising. She would try something like this".

The crowd of demigods had backed away from the smoke, leaving the eight crew members, Reyna, and the gods in a small circle of people with a dark mist swirling around their ankles.

"You are fools... all of you. I can see why Gaea enjoys watching this little show".

"Goodbye, useless ones. And Percy...?".

"Yes, my lady?".

"Do not use my name when you are speaking again, or else my presence will not be so peaceful".

"Yes, my lady. I understand".

As soon as he finished speaking the mist disappeared, and the presence of Nyx was no longer felt.

The threat was still hanging heavy in the air, and the gods all looked at each other solemnly.

Percy was the first to speak after she had gone. He looked no different after her visit, not even reacting when she had threatened them, and the look of borderline boredom in his eyes set everybody's nerves on edge.

"So... can we go back to camp and get ready to leave now? Gaea rises on August first, and she's not going to wait for us".

He reached back down to grab his shirt and put it on, giving the group a good view of his scars as well as the burned mark that had been made into his back from Nyx.

Nearby, Chiron stepped forward and answered his question.

"Yes... Let's all get back to camp and have some lunch. Put this nasty business behind us and get to know our new friends".

The group slowly turned and walked away, the Romans all going with them and ignoring Octavian's call to fight.

"Percy, why don't you go over to see Apollo, I'm sure he'd be able to heal you up", Poseidon walked over and put a hand on his shoulder.

Percy slipped out from beneath his grasp and shook his head.

"I'm fine. Thanks, though, dad".

Poseidon's brows knitted in confusion and the rest of the remaining gods and demigods on the hill came over.

"You ready to go?", Annabeth walked over and wrapped one arm around his waist.

"Yeah", he turned and smiled at her, and all of the confused and angry emotions disappeared from his face.

A mischievous grin soon took over his features, though.

"Have you ever ridden a hellhound before?".

Her eyes widened. "Percy, no".

He didn't listen, though, picking her up bridal style and carrying her over to Shadow who's ears perked up when he walked over.

"Put me down! Seaweed Brain!".

He flung her up onto his back very unceremoniously and then climbed on himself with expert grace.

"Let me down!", she demanded, although she was laughing and smiling like crazy.

"Not a chance. He leaned over her shoulder and gave her a quick peck on the lips.

"Come on, Shadow! Let's go".

He patted the hellhounds back, and they lurched forward.

"Where are they going? He needs medical attention", Poseidon asked, looking after his son confused.

Athena looked equally confused and annoyed.

"Did your spawn just kiss Annabeth?".

Piper walked passed and stopped and laughed when she heard Athena's question.

"If you thought that was a kiss than you should have seen their reunion".

Jason walked up and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer to him.

"Both of them", he added.

Piper smiled. "I'm calling them Percabeth".

Aphrodite nodded her head and smiled at her daughter in approval.

Poseidon just stared off after them.

"Apollo, would you be able to heal his injuries?".

Poseidon was still looking down the hill at the retreating form of his son, but when Apollo hesitated in answering he turned to look at him.

"Possibly, although I'd have to examine them. They look like they were healed with something, but I don't know what it could have been".

The rest of the seven heroes were a little ways away, talking and laughing and preparing to make their own way down the hill. But they stopped when they heard he gods conversation.

Sharing a look, they walked over to them as a group and stood in front of Poseidon and Apollo, blocking them from continuing down the hill towards Percy.

"Leave him alone". Hazel spoke up from the back of the group, surprising everybody at first. But then they all turned back around to glare at the two gods and nodded their heads in agreement.

"What?".

Apollo just took a few steps back and let Poseidon deal with the group.

"He's my son. What do you mean 'leave him alone'?".

"He doesn't want to be healed or examined. Even when he first came out of Tartarus he just locked himself in his room for a couple of days instead of going to the infirmary".

Jason picked up where she had left off, "He doesn't want to be bothered, so leave him alone!".

Adrenaline still pumped through the blood of all of the seven after what had just happened, making them say and do things that probably weren't the smartest. But they were all occupied in their thoughts.

Percy had fallen into Tartarus for Annabeth's sake, for the team's sake. They couldn't let the gods make him do something that he didn't want to do. They would protect him just like he had protected them.

"Watch your place, boy", Zeus thundered, joining the small group.

"This _is_ our place. As a team, protecting one another. Even from their meddling parents", Jason glared at his father, then, and the other gods fell silent.

The group turned around and continued down the hill, conversation picking up again as if they hadn't just challenged the Olympian gods.

Percy was their leader and had always protected them, and now it was time to repay the favour.


	10. Chapter 10

The next two days flew by in a blur. The Hephaestus and Vulcan cabins pulled all nighters, and soon there was an entire fleet of ships and other transport machines ready and waiting for the demigods to use.

The two groups got along remarkably well, and soon became indistinguishable from each other.

Only Octavian and a few of his more loyal followers didn't get along with the Greeks. But that didn't matter much, Reyna had gained control once again over the legion, and Octavian had been cast to the side and out of the way.

Leo worked tirelessly on the Argo II, making repairs and giving it fancy new upgrades.

The rest of the seven worked on stacking up on supplies and training the other demigods as much as they could in the two days that they had.

By the night before they were scheduled to leave, everything was in order and the camp was quiet.

Waves lapped at the shore not far from the cabins, and only the sound of Percy's hellhounds' snores broke the silence.

In Percy's mind, though, all was not peaceful.

He was in the middle of one of his nightmares. They circled and haunted his mind, and he was usually able to wake himself up before he could wake anybody else up. But tonight's nightmare was one of the worst he had ever gotten.

He was reliving the vision that Moros had shown him. Annabeth struggled in the big meaty hand of one of the giants. Percy couldn't tell which one. It didn't matter. All he could see were her eyes. Her beautiful stormy eyes which were shining with desperation, she caught sight of him and they lit up with hope just before the giant brought its sword to her throat and it was cut.

Blood ran down the giant's hand and arm, and within a second of it happening, Annabeth was gone.

Hanging limp and cold as a dark feminine voice seemed to come from everywhere.

 _Gaea._

Anger, white and hot, bloomed in the depths of his chest and soon turned into pure hatred.

He tried to yell out in a combination of both grief and anger, but nothing would come out.

The scene in front of him froze, and yet he still couldn't move. Stuck in his place and forced to stare at Annabeth's body.

Tears rolled down his cheeks, and he sobbed. His grief running so deep it was almost palpable.

Back at camp, a storm was brewing. Waves crashed on the beach almost viciously, and wind whipped around as a gathering hurricane began to build off shore.

Poseidon was on the beach, looking out at the stormy water with a blank expression on his face.

He could feel the great amount of pain in the ocean's actions, and knew that it could only come from Percy. He wanted nothing more than to run to his cabin and comfort him. And yet, his friends' words still echoed in his head.

" _He doesn't want to be bothered. So leave him alone!"._

As soon as he had felt the ocean's turmoil he had awoken and come here. But he could hear the sound of other cabin doors opening behind him and knew that the other gods and demigods had now been awaken by the noise.

"Brother! What is the matter? Why are you acting like this?".

Zeus and the other gods came up behind him on the beach, all but Zeus having to fight against the strong winds to reach him by the edge of the water.

"It's not me. It's Perseus".

He spoke at normal speaking level, but he knew that the wind would carry his voice back to the others.

They all froze as the sound of a girl's voice could be heard screaming over the wind.

"Percy!".

The gods turned and ran back up the hill, arriving at Cabin 3 just as the owner of the voice did.

Annabeth and the other seven crew members had just arrived along with a few other curious campers who had heard the commotion.

Together, they opened the door and ran inside the cabin, only to stop in their tracks.

Percy was laying on his bed, all of the blankets having been blown off with all of his wounds exposed.

The one in his side was bleeding again, as if he had been scratching at it, and the blood stained his sheets.

His hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat, and he kept muttering random things that didn't make any sense under his breath.

"Doom. Doom and Destiny".

"Annabeth".

He tossed and turned, blood and sweat staining the sheets.

Then, suddenly, he went still and silent. And yet the storm outside still continued to rage on.

Before anybody could say anything, he spoke again. In the dark and scratchy voice that didn't sound at all like him.

"Gaea".

At just that one word, all the shadows in the room seemed to lean towards him, the storm reached its peak, and the ground began to shake.

He screamed, a loud grieving sound that only added to the crescendo of noise that was the storm outside.

"NO!".

Zeus turned to Poseidon just as Annabeth ran to Percy's side.

"Stop this. Control your son before he destroys this camp!".

But Poseidon just shook his head sadly.

"I cannot. His power is fuelled by his pure emotion. Trying to exert my power would only result in a stalemate that would make the storm even bigger".

Meanwhile, Annabeth was knelt on Percy's bed trying to get him to sit still and calm down.

"Percy! _Percy!_ Wake up! _Percy!_ " _._

But he just responded with more yelling, _"_ Please! No! _Please!_ ".

She sat back defeated, tears clouding her eyes.

Apollo stepped forward, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder and pulling her away.

"Let me see if I can heal him, make him feel less pain. It might allow him to calm down enough to wake up".

Percy wanted nothing more than to wake up. But he was trapped there, watching and staring as the worst thing happened again and again right in front of his eyes and he continued not to be able to do anything about it.

Apollo reached forward, placing his palm on Percy's forehead and closing his eyes in concentration.

Almost as soon as his hand made contact with Percy's skin, his face blanched.

Soon, he couldn't take it anymore and pulled away with an unusually grim face.

"What is happening in his mind right now is far beyond my expertise".

The other gods and demigods stared at him in shock.

"What? There are some things that I'm not good at", he shrugged his shoulders and turned, "Dionysus, I think this is more in your domain".

"Hold on a moment. My son is not crazy", Poseidon's eyes flashed, and if Percy wasn't already doing it, the earth would have shook beneath them.

"No, no, uncle. I agree, he's not. He's just being mentally tortured", he looked around the group and watched as his meaning sunk in.

Poseidon gestured for Dionysus to continue forward, and he did so, reluctantly.

He placed a hand in Percy's messy hair and immediately his golden aura glowed more brightly.

He growled in frustration, and the smell of grapes filled the room.

"Moros".

He glowed brighter in a flash of light before dying out completely with a sigh.

The yelling stopped, and the storm immediately subsided outside. His body relaxed, and his hands fell back to his side, dried blood caked under his fingernails.

"There".

His breathing was ragged and uneven, and tears still slipped silently down his cheeks.

"Just a little bit of ambrosia and he should be fine".

Poseidon nodded and stepped forward, taking out the small baggie with the little cubes and taking one out.

He put it into the still unconscious Percy's mouth and stepped away. But instead of dissolving and healing him, Percy shot awake and spat it out, the food of the gods vile in his mouth.

His eyes opened and before anybody could move he had pinned his father to the ground with Riptide at his throat.

"Percy!".

Percy's pupils were dilated with fear, and they still weren't completely cleared from the mist of sleep.

Once he realised who exactly it was that he had pinned on the ground below him, he immediately stepped back and a look of horror crossed his face.

"I-I'm so sorry. I-". He ran a hand through his messy hair, and stepped back, Riptide clattering to the floor next to him as he let it fall from his hands.

"I thought you were- I'm sorry". His son looked up at him with green eyes so full of grief and sadness that it made the Lord of the Seas' heart reach out.

"It's fine. Percy, it's fine. It was an accident".

Despite his father's words of reassurance, he continued to pace back and forth across the floor of his cabin. His hands automatically going to the scar in his side.

He stopped pacing when his hand pulled away red from his blood.

He just stared at it, not moving for a while before sighing and walking deliberately across the cabin.

"Percy, we tried to give you some ambrosia, but it didn't work. Can you tell us why?", Apollo stepped forward, the concern in his eyes being accompanied by a look of intense curiosity.

"Don't worry. I've got it". From a chest of drawers in the corner of his room, he produced a scorched water bottle and two rags. One which was covered in blood and had random scorched holes burned through it, and one which was relatively clean except for the occasional drop of blood.

"Percy… What are you doing?". the gods all looked nervously at the bloody rag in his hand, but it had been Annabeth who had spoken up.

"I've got it. I don't need help. I'm okay". His words seemed like they were more directed at himself than the others still gathered in his cabin, and they all exchanged nervous glances.

The blood was coming out slightly faster now from all of the movement. Cuts within the scar in the shape of nail marks clawed into his side.

Percy didn't seem to mind the blood, just holding his hand tighter to his side and making his way over to a corner of his cabin.

He slid to the floor, his back leant back agains the wall and his legs bent up in front of him.

Slowly, he turned more so that he was on his side, and uncapped the water bottle he had set on the floor next to him.

Smoke drifted out of it, along with an alarming smell. He moved the scorched rag so that it was right underneath the wound, and put the other rag in his mouth.

Before anybody could ask what he was doing, he poured the fiery contents of his water bottle onto the bloodied area. It made a hissing sound, and the smell of burnt flesh filled the room. Percy screamed into the rag, tears that he refused to let fall gathering in his eyes.

The wound closed completely after only about a couple of seconds of this, but it was enough for everybody present to be sufficiently horrified.

He spit the rag out onto the floor and recapped the bottle. He used the other rag to mop up any left over water or blood, and then stood up and returned his materials to the chest.

"Annabeth, I'm going for a swim. Come get me when we're ready to go".

She nodded, kissing him gently on the cheek before he continued on past them and towards the beach.

Hazel and Piper walked up and rubbed her arms and back comfortingly, while the boys just stared after him and talked amongst themselves.

"Did he just, _leave_?".

Apollo finally spoke, his words breaking the rest of the gods out of the shocked stupor that they all seemed to be stuck in.

"Yeah. He, uh, does that".

Leo spoke up from where he, Jason, and Frank had been talking.

Annabeth had calmed herself down, too. And looked at the gods with determination in her eyes.

"We're working on it".

"Yeah, once he gets back on the boat he'll be okay", Jason pushed himself up off the wall, and the rest of the seven began to make their way back outside.

They seemed to have accepted it, already used to Percy's crazy nightmares. But the gods were still all deeply horrified at what they had just seen.

"And you guys are just accepting this?!".

The group of demigods looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.

"Well… yeah. He's been through a lot, but he's still the same person. Still Percy".

Poseidon smiled gratefully as he studied his son's support system. As long as Percy had them he would be fine.


	11. Chapter 11

The campers who had been awakened by the storm slowly returned to their cabins and began to get ready. They had been awoken in the early hours of the morning, earlier than they would have planned, but still too late to try going back to sleep.

Soon, all the ships were packed with supplies and demigods, and they were ready to go.

The Argo II led the fleet of sorts, and pulled out of the harbor first.

Just as they expected, they hadn't sailed far when a huge stream of water shot up and onto their deck, carrying Percy with it.

He seemed to be in a better mood than he was in before, the scowl and confusion in his eyes gone, replaced by the almost childlike happiness that took over him whenever he went into the water.

"Feeling better?", Annabeth asked, smiling as she saw her boyfriend's better spirits.

"Yeah", he crossed the deck and pulled her in for a kiss before walking up to the helm to speak with Leo.

"Hey, Leo, how long do you think— Oh. Sorry, Lord Hephaestus".

Percy walked to the control room of the ship to ask Leo how long the trip would be, but when he got there he was only greeted by both his friend and his father who were underneath the control board on their backs looking at something.

Leo seemed to be explaining something to his father, but when Percy walked in he wiggled out.

His face was smeared with grease, and his father came up behind him and put out the fire that had lit on his shirt.

"Whoops".

"What's up?".

"Oh, nothing. I just wanted to come by to ask how long it would be until we arrived, but you're busy, so I can come by later".

Hephaestus was standing a little ways away, eyeing Percy curiously like he was a new piece of machinery, and it made him slightly uncomfortable.

"No, no, no. That's okay", he turned around to the control board and started typing on a few things.

"Normally, we would get there in about four days, but your father said that he had some tricks up his sleeve to get us there faster, and I'm not completely sure what he was going to do".

"Okay, thanks", he was about to go leave and find his father to see if he could help somehow, but Leo looked at him like he wanted to say more, so he stayed and looked at him expectantly.

"You good now?", he finally asked after his father cleared his throat uncomfortably behind him.

"Yeah, yeah I'm fine. Just a nightmare, you know?".

Leo wanted to say that he understood, that he did 'know'. But he didn't. Talking to people wasn't his forte to begin with. Talking to people who had gone through so much like Percy had? Forget it.

"Percy, that wasn't just some usual nightmare", he started, not sure how to, but sure that he had to talk to him somehow.

The shadow of a grin that had been hovering around Percy's face since he had gotten out of the ocean began to fade. Replaced by a guarded look, and then just one of simple exhaustion.

He rubbed his face and said, "Yeah, I know".

"Apollo said that you were being mentally tortured? Mentally tortured by who, Percy? What's going on?".

Leo was on a roll now, and suddenly spit out all of the questions that had been hovering around in his brain for the past week.

Percy's sea green eyes looked up to study Leo for a few beats, making eye contact and refusing to let go before he seemed to decide that he could trust him.

"Moros. Primordial god of doom and destiny. I pissed him off", Percy shrugged his shoulders and tried to play the whole thing off as more casual than it was. But Leo and his father could see right through him.

The god of the forge sighed, having to just accept that the boy had what could only be described as a talent for making all powerful beings angry.

"How did you manage that?", Leo asked, not even really surprised.

"He made me angry".

"Oh", Leo visibly paled, but Hephaestus didn't really get it.

"What do you mean, lad?". Percy looked up, surprised. He didn't expect the god to actually talk to him.

Percy's eyes grew stormy like he was reliving the memory, and his grin went from genuine to menacing.

"When Percy gets angry, he could kill people", Leo explained to his father, remembering the last time that had happened.

"But that's not possible. Moros is immortal you couldn't have killed him", the god insisted, still not seeing how the skinny boy in front of him could have ever hoped to take on a primordial.

"He was going to kill Annabeth. I had to".

The god raised his eyebrows. He knew that he loved the girl, but this was an entire different level. And looking into his eyes now, lit up with just a fraction of the anger that they must have once been, he had no doubt that he would take on the whole of Olympus for her.

He would have to bring it up to the council. Avoiding that kind of anger from the boy had to be prioritized.

"So… What do you think your dad's going to be doing to help speed up the journey?", Leo asked.

It was a good idea, Percy's eyes immediately cleared of the reminiscent anger that they had from the memory and cleared as he thought of the ocean.

"I don't know. I'm going to go check. See you guys later!".

The boy's sudden mood swing somehow managed to freak Hephaestus out even more, and he just stared after the demigod. He thought he had him all figured out, guess not.

Man, human interaction is difficult.

Before he could walk out the door, Percy turned back to Leo, "Oh, and Leo? Whatever you guys are doing… Try not to blow up the engine… _again"_.

He grinned as Hephaestus looked down at his son, shocked.

"Again?".

Percy chuckled as Leo weakly tried to explain to his father what had happened the first time while still glaring after Percy.

"Well, you see…".

Percy laughed to himself again as he continued on, walking out of earshot.

He made his way towards the front of the Argo II where the best view of the water was. He knew that's where his father would be if anywhere.

The sea god was standing right on the far edge of the ship, as close to the water as he could get without falling off.

Percy walked over and leaned on the rail next to his father, not saying anything but joining him in looking out at the water in his thoughts.

"So… Do you feel better now?", his father asked.

His gaze didn't leave the glittering water, so he didn't see the grin on his son's face drop slightly.

"Yes. The water is always able to clear my head".

Poseidon nodded and turned to his son with a smile.

He had never been the best at having meaningful conversations with his children, and this was no exception. He knew he had to make sure that he was okay, but he didn't have a clue as to how.

"Good, good. Do you want to help guide the fleet across the Atlantic?".

Percy looked relieved at the topic change and nodded his head, a grin taking back over his face.

"There are still a few tricks of the sea I haven't taught you yet", the sea god's eyes sparkled mischievously, and he held out an arm in front of him.

The two spent the rest of the day together on the front of the boat, alternating between using the currents to speed across the ocean and having his father teach Percy new tricks with his powers.

"Now concentrate on the water in the air, Percy", his father was schooling him, while the hero himself had his eyes closed in concentration.

Suddenly, he disappeared in a puff of sea spray, and reappeared right over the side of the boat in front of them.

Percy just had time to register Leo and his father's surprised faces through the window before he fell down into the water below.

When he came up, his father had used the currents to move the boat so that it were far out of reach.

He huffed, and summoned a wave to chase after the retreating boat.

When he finally caught up, he made his wave completely wash over the boat, glaring at his laughing father as he landed on solid deck again.

The god of the sea wiped a few stray tears from his eyes before turning to his son who was still playfully glaring at him.

"Really?", he asked sarcastically.

This caused Poseidon to chuckle again before putting a hand on his son's shoulder and steering him towards the galley.

"Come on. We've been summoned to a meeting".

"But I still haven't mastered vapour travel yet!", Percy protested. He hated giving up on something before he had completely mastered it.

Poseidon turned to him with laughter but also understanding in his eyes. "Don't worry. We'll come back to it later".

Percy grumbled under his breath, but allowed his father to steer him towards the galley and the others.

 **POV: Leo**

( _Earlier that afternoon)_

Leo turned away from the window where he had just seen Percy appear out of thin air and then fall into the ocean and shook his head.

"I don't think I'll ever understand that boy", his father grumbled beside him.

They turned back to join the others who had gathered at the table.

"What is this about Hephaestus?", Zeus asked his son. His voice sounded annoyed, but it also held a note of genuine curiosity. The forge god never voluntarily spoke to anybody if he could help it.

The god and his son sat down before he answered.

"I am concerned about Perseus Jackson".

The gods stopped talking to one another and looked towards the door nervously. Thankfully, Percy and his father were still nowhere to be seen. But that didn't stop his girlfriend from glaring at the god.

"What about him?", she snapped.

The god visibly paled as the daughter of Athena gave him her best death glare.

Athena herself, though, nodded her head.

"I agree".

"Mother!".

"The boy is very powerful, and very dangerous".

"Percy is not dangerous! He's our friend!", Annabeth persisted.

Her mother's eyes flashed at her daughter's foolishness, "That is precisely the problem. He is loyal, too loyal. He may very well destroy all of Olympus just to protect those he loves. It is a very immediate concern".

"Concern?! His loyalty is what makes him such an amazing hero!", she argued back.

Surprisingly, Hephaestus was the one to stop the argument before it could escalate further.

"Stop! That is not what I was referring to".

Both mother and daughter turned to the god in confusion.

"What do you mean?".

"I was referring to his nightmare last night, or rather, torture".

Everybody looked from Apollo to Dionysus, expecting some sort of further explanation from either of them.

Dionysus sighed, "I suppose it would be my job to help the brat, then".

Annabeth sent him another withering glare, and he flinched subconsciously before continuing.

"From what I was able to tell when I helped him earlier, someone was sending him visions and not letting him awaken from them".

There was some murmuring among the gods.

"Who could do that?", Piper asked, looking around at the worried faces of the gods.

Dionysus' face darkened, "Moros".

"Who?".

The group was silent again as they all looked at Dionysus and waited for him to explain.

"Primordial god of doom and destiny. I've had quite a few run ins with him. He likes to drive people insane by showing them visions of their fate. Then, of course, they come to me".

Annabeth's face blanched. "Fate? As in, it will happen no matter what you do?".

"Well, yes and no. Why?", Dionysus narrowed his eyes at Annabeth, whose face seemed to be getting paler and paler.

"Percy said he saw a vision of me being sacrificed to Gaea. My throat being slit. Will that definitely happen?".

Annabeth swallowed hard, and Dionysus was surprised to see her mother with a look of alarm on her face.

"Well… no, not necessarily. There are some choices that have to be made that have the potential to change someone's fate", Dionysus pondered the idea for a while, but eventually shrugged it off.

He must have been spending too much time with Athena if he was actually starting to think about things like that.

"Why would Moros attack Percy? What does he have against him?", Jason asked, bringing everybody's attention back to the present.

"I don't know".

"I do".

Everybody turned to look at Hephaestus, surprised. The forge god never spoke this much in meetings. Ever.

Leo nodded his head next to him solemnly, remembering the little confession that he had gotten out of Percy earlier that afternoon.

Before he could explain, though, a huge force that the crew recognised as a wave hit the side of the ship.

The seven rolled their eyes.

"He's almost as dramatic as Zeus".

"Hey!".

Before Zeus could go on a rant the two missing crew members walked in.

Poseidon had laughter in his eyes, and Percy mockingly shoved him as they walked through the door.

As soon as they saw everybody staring at them, though, they sobered up.

Poseidon walked over and sat down in his place between Zeus and Hades, but Percy stayed standing.

"What's going on?".

There had been a feeling in the air when his father and he walked into the room, like they had been talking about him. And now they all stared at him expectantly, as if they all expected him to burst into flames any second.

It irritated him.

"What is it?! Why are you all staring at me?".

His stiffer tone made some of the demigods flinch, and he immediately felt bad.

Finally, Zeus spoke up.

"We were just discussing your nightmares. Dionysus here has determined that somebody is torturing you with images of fate".

They expected him to look fearful or scared, or _something_. But not calm, borderline bored.

"Let me guess. It's Moros. That guy was always just an overgrown child".

Some of the gods visibly flinched and looked around as if they expected him to jump out of the shadows, the demigods just stared at him with their mouths open in shock.

 _Percy wasn't even scared that a_ _ **primordial god**_ _was angry at him. What happened down there?_

Slowly recovering from their shock, Dionysus nodded his head and looked at Percy with a weird expression, as if he was trying to determine whether or not Percy had gone insane.

"What have you done that a primordial god has made it his personal business to torture you?", Zeus asked, narrowing his eyes at the boy suspiciously.

Percy's gaze grew sharp, and his eyes took on that darker green colour that they did when he was evaluating a threat.

He met each of their eyes individually, making the gods and demigods on edge before sighing and leaning against the wall.

It was a strange turn of events, and Percy's mood swing took them all off guard.

His façade was back, and he looked as casual as if he were just having a normal conversation as he leaned against the wall.

"You all know I have the blessing of Nyx", he started, and all of the gods immediately perked up. They had been curious about how he had managed the feat ever since it was revealed.

"Well, this is how it happened".

"I had been trekking through some sort of canyon for a while now, every once and a while taking shelter in the odd cave. I had no idea how long I had been walking, no idea how long I had been in Tartarus in general. Time is different down there, you guys told me I had only been down there for two weeks, but for me it felt like years".

The others shuddered, but said nothing, completely drawn in by the story.

"I got this scar on my back after being hunted by a pack of hellhounds. I barely escaped with my life, and was in too much pain to move for a very long time. The next time I drifted back into consciousness, I woke up and he was there, standing over me. He scared me half to death".

He chuckled darkly, but nobody laughed with him. This was not in any way funny.

"He told me that his mother wanted to see me and then just walked away, saying something about how it was my fate to follow him. Of course, I did follow him. The monsters seemed to be scared of him, and ran away when he walked past, I figured that if I could just hang around him for a little while I'd be safe".

Athena raised her eyebrow at the sea spawn in front of her.

 _That's actually not a bad plan._

"He led us across the large field that I never would have gotten across on my own, and I was about to split, but he lead us right into Nyx's palace. The gates were closed behind me and something was making me want to stay, just stay forever. Looking back on it now I suspect that it was actually someone manipulating my emotions".

Percy shrugged his shoulders, but the others just stared at him in shock and horror.

"Nyx came out of her palace, and I kneeled down. She seemed to like it when I did that. Also when I called her, 'my lady'".

Hermes and Aphrodite nodded at him in understanding.

"Bribery".

"Flattery".

They glared at each other and Percy continued, now almost completely overtaken by the memory.

"She had sensed me come into her territory and wanted to know why I was there. I told her that I had come to close the doors of death, but she didn't believe me. She was going to kill me, but I told her that she couldn't because I was part of the prophecy to stop Gaea from rising. She didn't know about that and was angry. She asked me if I was part of a prophecy why was I in Tartarus".

Annabeth looked down dejectedly, and, noticing this, Percy shot her a reassuring smile before continuing.

"Moros went on this whole rant about how Annabeth was supposed to be the one to fall in. That it was her fate to die in Tartarus and that I had messed it all up. He sounded just like a whining little kid and I started flat out laughing at him".

Percy grinned remembering how Moros' face had looked when he was complaining to Lady Nyx about him. It was actually genuinely funny.

The others once again cast him wary looks, and Dionysus again examined his mind for any sort of insanity.

Percy's laughing cut off as he felt Dionysus' intrusion and turned to him with a glare.

"Get out of my head".

His voice was cold and sharp, and the glare he sent along with it was plenty scary for Mr. D's liking.

He withdrew, and the other gods stared at him in shock. Dionysus never let anybody insult him like that.

With a final glare in the god of wine's direction, he sat back and closed his eyes, continuing on with his oral story.

"Obviously he got angry with me for laughing. Although I did manage to get Nyx to stop thinking about killing me because now she was just curious. She asked me what I was laughing about, and I told her that I was laughing about how weak her son was".

Poseidon groaned and put his head in his hands, eliciting a small smile from Percy.

"Relax, dad. I'm here aren't I".

"Anyway, he didn't really like that. He came at me, and I thought he was going to attack at first but he didn't. Instead he just put a hand on my forehead".

Percy stopped, catching his breath and swallowing down the lump that had appeared in his throat as he remembered those visions.

"He showed me visions- horrible visions", he involuntarily shuddered before the laid back façade came back on and his face shifted from a pained grimace to complete indifference.

"He said that they were of Annabeth's fate. It was the crew, sailing on the Argo II and you guys were alone without back up. Then you were attacked. And then I saw all the crew captured in a cage in the House of Hades, and then I saw Annabeth captured by herself with those group of cyclopes, and then I saw Annabeth's throat slit, and her blood spilled on some sort of sacrificial altar".

Percy's fists clenched and his eyes glowed with power as emotions rolled through him at the memory.

"Uh, Percy? Calm down, bud", Leo said nervously.

Percy looked up and met the group's eyes and they all started in surprise.

Percy's eyes were glowing a dark green, the irises seeming to swirl and crash like violent waves on the beach.

"Percy? What's happening? What are you doing?", Hazel asked, fear in her voice.

He shook himself out of the rage induced haze and looked around the room.

Everybody was looking at him, startled, all except for Poseidon, who was concentrating on calming down the waves that had appeared outside in response to Percy's emotions.

"Sorry".

The glow died from his eyes and he shook his head in confusion.

Everybody was still staring at him, mouths agape.

"What's wrong?".

"Your-your _eyes_. They were… _glowing_!", Piper said, looking at him carefully.

"Eidolons?".

Jason's eyes immediately narrowed and he looked at Percy with a different perspective.

But Poseidon raised his hand and shook his head, effectively cutting off any conversation.

"No. No eidolons", he stared at Percy as if evaluating him. "Percy is just more powerful than I initially thought".

His neutral face of concentration was replaced by a grin.

"We can have fun with this". His eyes took on a maniacal glint, and the other gods leaned away from him nervously.

"Yes… well… I think we're good for now", Zeus said, awkwardly patting his brother on the back. "Continue, Perseus, what you have told us so far still does not explain why he would be so angry at you".

"Right… sorry. Anyway, after I came out of the visions, I got really angry and attacked Moros with Riptide. I got a few nice sized cuts in and then he was on the ground beneath my feet and he was just laughing at me, taunting me. I couldn't take it anymore and I snapped. Something happened, and I'm not sure what. But his golden ichor seemed to flow like water, and I could sense the water that was in it, so I called on it, just like I do with water".

Everyone stared at him in shock, especially the gods, thinking that it was just not possible that ichor could be controlled.

"Some-something in here broke", he said, gesturing to himself. "Something deep inside. He began bleeding faster, and I saw the light draining from his eyes as his ichor pooled around him".

Percy flexed his fists, as if missing the pure power that he had felt when he had been controlling the ichor.

"I killed him", he said quietly, and the gods just stared at him in horror.

"He was going to kill Annabeth, I had to. I had to!", he said. He pushed off the wall and his façade broke.

His face was distorted into some sort of distraught, grief-filled grimace. And both his hands went through his hair restlessly.

Talking about his time down there in such detail was too much for him.

Poseidon watched in shock and horrible helplessness as his son continued with the story of how he had survived and done the unspeakable.

"He would have faded completely, but Nyx stopped me, said that she'd seen enough and that I could live. She wanted me to join her ranks in Tartarus, but I said no. She said that if I wouldn't join her ranks than the least she could do was give me her blessing. That's how I got this", he said, offhandedly gesturing to the tattoo that they all knew was there.

Percy seemed to calm down, then. His breathing came slower and deeper, and the easygoing expression came back over his face.

It was just a mask, though. His emotions boiled around inside of him like molten rock underneath a volcano before it blows.

He looked around the room, his eyes the only real window into what he was feeling.

"So… yeah. She gave me her blessing, I got to the doors through the Mansion of Night, and I escaped and kicked some monster butt".

He smiled one of his signature grins. "I guess he's just angry that I bested him".

Emotionally exhausted, he collapsed into the chair at the end of the table while everybody continued to stare at him.

"So...?", everybody was still staring at him in shock and silence, and it was getting a little bit awkward.

"Well... that would make somebody angry...", Annabeth said, trying to break the silence.

Percy offered her a grateful smile, and she returned it.

As he went to turn back and face the rest of the table, though, he blinked and a bolt of black lightening seemed the go through his brain.

" _Weak young hero"_.

The voice of Moros in his mind was accompanied by dark laughter, and he tensed up.

"Sorry... um, I have to go— the water. Annabeth".

He looked at her pleadingly, hoping that she would understand.

The whisper in the back of his mind got louder, and he looked at her with panic in his eyes.

"Don't worry. Go!", she said, pushing him towards the door.

He ran out the door, and soon there was a large splash followed by silence.

"Where is he going? We're not done speaking yet", Zeus asked, glaring after him.

She turned her death glare on the god, her words sharp as she dared him with her tone to do anything more.

"I think we are".

"Yeah. You just made Percy describe in great detail one of his most painful memories. He's going to need some time", Piper spoke up from next to her, reaching over and grabbing Annabeth's hand in hers.

All the demigods stood up and began moving towards the door together.

Zeus looked flustered. Nobody but his two annoying brothers had ever talked to him like that before, and he couldn't exactly blast the demigods with lightening to make them shut up like he could his brothers, so he didn't know what to do.

"Well—How long will he be gone?", Zeus finally asked.

They just shrugged.

"We don't know. Most days he comes back within a few hours. But he really seemed shaken up. He'll definitely be back by tomorrow".

"Tomorrow! He needs to be back before then. We'll be entering the old sea soon. It's too dangerous for him to be swimming out there by himself when that happens", Poseidon said, a flash of worry crossing his face.

For the first time Annabeth seemed to see the gods' point, and her face changed.

"I'll go find him. He might listen to me".

With that. The seven demigods walked out of the galley, leaving a group of stunned gods behind.


	12. Chapter 12

The wind whipped through her hair from the speed of the boat as the Argo II and the rest of the fleet behind her cut through the waves of the Atlantic like butter. She was by herself, having sent the rest of the seven who had wanted to come to back to their various daily activities. She knew this would be a sensitive conversation.

All was silent, and at first it just looked like she was just going to stand there, letting the sun warm the back of her eyelids and the sea spray wet her face, but then she spoke.

"Are you okay, Seaweed Brain?".

There was no response, but Annabeth knew that he was listening. Subtle changes in the current and the waves, differences that you wouldn't notice unless you were looking for them. She continued on.

"I know that must have been difficult for you. I'm proud of you".

The water was calm and flat as glass. Annabeth looked down, and there, at the bottom of the ocean staring back at her with his captivating green eyes was her Seaweed Brain. He was just laying their, on his back on the seafloor, seemingly completely at peace. But Annabeth knew better.

She could see it in his tense posture and the way that his hands occasionally twitched, his battle instincts kicking in as they sensed the turmoil inside of him. He had a small smile on his face, probably just from being in the water at all, and his hair floated gently around his head like a black halo.

She knew he was listening, especially when he looked up at her and blinked twice before grinning up at her and giving her a cheeky wave.

It was quite odd, actually, the way his moods seemed to change so quickly and so suddenly, but Annabeth was slowly growing used to it. She was getting better able to tell when Percy's mood was about to change, getting better at recognising the signs before anything happens.

"Are you okay, Percy?".

His grin dropped from his face, and he turned his head so that it was no longer visible. The water seemed to grow choppier, and she could no longer see anything of him beyond a blurry form at the bottom of the sea.

"Come on, Seaweed Brain. I know you can hear me".

A moment of silence. Then another. Then finally bubbles began to appear in the water just in front of the still moving ship, and Percy appeared.

He was floating along in the same position that he had been in on the bottom of the sea, pulled along and keeping up with the ship with his own personal current.

His eyes were still closed, and both his hands were folded behind his head like he was completely at ease, but Annabeth knew better.

Despite knowing this, she took the hint. He didn't want to talk about it.

That was fine for her for now. But Percy _would_ talk about his feelings. She wouldn't let him just bottle them up inside of him like he always did.

So instead, she began to talk about anything and everything. Her latest design ideas, the Stolls' best prank at camp since he had been gone.

Gratefully, she watched as his muscles began to relax, one by one, until he seemed almost completely at ease, and he opened his eyes.

"Feeling better?", she asked, noticing this.

He gave an almost unnoticeable nod and a smile. Willing the water to his aid, he used it to lift himself up and onto the deck right next to her. She smiled back at him, and they simultaneously rushed forward. One of his arms wrapped around her waist and brought her somehow closer to him, and the other wandered up to her face, cupping her cheek and bringing her face up to his.

The kiss was sweet, and slow and gentle, and basically embodied all things perfect about their relationship, but it soon developed into something more.

It was at that moment, five minutes later that Poseidon decided that it had been too long and left in search of his son and his girlfriend. He rounded the corner of where he thought that they'd be, and walked straight into… a very awkward situation.

He was about to just try and back away without them seeing him when the floorboard underneath his right foot let out a loud creak, and the couple turned around to stare right at him. Immediately their faces bloomed bright red and they broke apart.

"Oh! I'm sorry, I was just— I wanted to come fine you and— You know what I'm just going to go and leave you to… yeah".

He retreated quickly back to the galley where the majority of the crew and major gods were still gathered.

His face, too, was bright red, and it was immediately noticed when he walked into the room. Apollo was bouncing a ball against the wall in his boredom, but sat up with interest once he saw his uncle's state.

"Uncle P! What's got you all worked up?".

Everybody else in the room turned to look at the embarrassed sea god as he plopped down on an empty couch.

"I just went to search for Percy and Annabeth".

None of the gods got what that meant, but the present seven of the quest just stared at him with mirth in their eyes.

"Lord Poseidon, with all due respect, you _never_ go try to find Percy and Annabeth when they're alone together", Piper said smiling.

"Why not?", Athena asked.

Just then, Apollo seemed to get what they were talking about and burst out laughing.

"Once, they went missing and we couldn't find them for breakfast. We couldn't find them for close to two hours. Frank found them in the stables. They claimed they "fell asleep"", Leo said, joining in on the laughter.

Frank himself got red at the memory, and the other gods who finally got what they were talking about joined in on the laughter.

Athena's face went through a series of emotions, finally landing on anger.

"Poseidon! You get you sea-spawn away from my daughter!", she yelled, whipping around to face the sea god.

For his own part, Poseidon had long gotten over the embarrassment, and was now just glad for his son. He smirked at his long-time rival.

"I guess us _sea-spawn_ are just irresistible".

Athena turned red and her whole body seemed to shake with anger. Meanwhile Poseidon's gaze swept around the room until it met his brother Hades.

He winked with a sly smirk, which just confused the lord of the dead.

And yet it brought back memories. Some of the only good memories he had ever shared with any of his siblings. From the moment his little brother had opened his eyes after being swallowed by their father Hades had always felt some sort of strange connection to him.

 _Maybe he wasn't a lost cause after all._

Hades was brought out of his unusually optimistic thoughts when the talked about couple walked in.

As soon as Percy saw the smirk still on his father's face, he groaned.

"Really dad! You had to tell them all?!".

Another peal of laughter went around the room, and both Annabeth and Percy turned an unhealthy shade of red.

Athena just glared at Percy with all she had, and it felt like somebody was burning a hole through the back of his head with a laser beam.

He chose to ignore her, and after a while of this she huffed to herself and gave up.

Percy was (understandably) in much better spirits now, and he spent the rest of the afternoon in the galley of the ship with the crew and most of the gods playing various games and even just sitting together and talking.

Occasionally Percy would catch somebody looking at him warily when they didn't think he was looking. They were still kind of shaken up from the revelations of earlier that afternoon.

Thankfully, Percy's close friends were already used to his serious mood swings, and had even developed a sort of intolerance to the horrifying stories that he told.

They treated him no differently, and everybody else followed their lead. They were glad to see their old friends beginning to emerge again. The light-heartedness of their journey so far was starting to get to him, and when he smiled it reached his eyes, turning them the beautiful sea green that everybody had come to know and love.

Eventually, though, night came and it was time to sleep. Sadly for him, Annabeth's mother was on the ship, and she was forced to sleep in her own cabin. Percy had volunteered for second watch, and had made Jason promise to wake him up when it was his turn.

The crew was still trying to go easy on him. And even though it was just in small insignificant ways like this, it still annoyed him.

According to Leo, they had entered the old sea a couple of hours ago, but with the happy mood the crew had been in for the better part of the afternoon, Percy had hardly even noticed.

Now he noticed, though. The boat swayed back and forth in the current. Had he been anywhere else, this would have soothed him. But these felt different, almost hostile. And just as he had felt when Percy had been on his quest in the Sea of Monsters all those years ago, he felt completely and utterly lost.

Ad he closed his eyes, a deep sense of foreboding filled him. And as he fell into unconsciousness, he saw why.

A dream was coming into focus. He couldn't tell what it was, but it felt off... different somehow. Though he couldn't quite put his finger on why.

The dream came into focus, and he immediately recognized the scene as one from a one of their first days aboard the Argo II after he had returned about two weeks ago.

He and Annabeth laid together on the floor of the stables of the Argo II. It had become their special place, though they didn't exactly understand why.

Their breathing cane faster than usual, and some slight sweat coated their brows. But they didn't seem to mind. In fact, it was quite the opposite. They were both smiling impossibly broad smiles, and Annabeth seemed to almost glow.

"Gods I missed you", Annabeth said a bit breathily as soon as Percy had broken apart the kiss that had concluded their... activities.

"I missed you too, wise Girl".

He sat back so that his back was against the wall behind him and he was sitting next to Annabeth.

Annabeth snuggled in closer to him, her head resting against his chest and finding comfort in the fast and strong beating of his heart.

"Don't you ever leave me again". She tried to make the words come out forceful and fierce. But her lower lip was shaking, and her head was partially buried in his shirt.

Personally, Percy thought that it was the most adorable thing that he'd ever seen in his life. But he'd never say that to her.

"I wouldn't dream of it, Wise Girl".

The scene changed, and Percy found himself in another memory, though this one was not so pleasant.

The horrors of the now familiar nightmare vision that Moros had shown him of Annabeth's supposed fate played behind his eyes, and he once again found that he was unable to do anything but watch as it happened.

Suddenly, the dream strayed from the norm, and a sound pierced the air around them.

It was a foreign sound, one that Percy didn't immediately recognize. Once he did, his blood ran cold, and he stared up at Annabeth, or more accurately, her stomach, with double the horror as before.

The dream flashed between this scene and the scene in the stables, all the while the sound of a baby crying in the background making Percy's blood run cold.

The dream continued to show him his new, changed path, and what he saw was even more horrifying.

The giant that had Annabeth in his grasp held her up high, just as he had before. And just as he had before, he raised the huge knife up towards her struggling body.

But this time, instead of slitting her throat, he plunged the knife deep into her stomach. Eliciting a scream that was filled with both physical and emotional pain.

"No! No, please, NO!", she sobbed as the blood poured from her body. Her words weakened the more she said and the more blood was spilled, until, at last, she hung completely limp.

A deep, feminine laugh echoed up from the very ground around him, and it was all Percy could do to keep from screaming at seeing the love of his life murdered... again.

"One death and yet two lives lost. How does it feel, Perseus to watch both the lives of your love and your unborn child end while you stood and did nothing?".

The words rattled around in his brain and tears _streamed_ down his face. There was no doubt in his mind what Gaea had meant by her words. She obviously meant to say more, but before she could, he was nudged awake.

"Percy? You okay, bro? It's your shift".

Jason was standing above him and looking down at him with concerned eyes.

Percy reached up and felt the moisture on his cheeks, realizing that he had been crying in real life as well.

Embarrassed, he reached up and wiped it away before standing up and taking Riptide out of his pocket.

Jason and he walked out the door of Percy's cabin. Jason turned left and he turned right. Percy was glad as he saw his friend walk into his cabin and shut the door behind him. He had been working hard and deserved some rest.

Percy walked up the stairs and onto the deck to meet Hazel and Nico who were both on guard with him.

It was still the middle of the night when he reached the deck. Sea spray reached his face, but the water of the old sea provided no comfort.

The two half siblings of Hades were already there and engaged in their own soft conversation, so he drifted over to the railing of the ship and peered our over the moonlit water.

Far in the distance, so far he almost couldn't see it, but unfortunately it was there nonetheless.

A blurry blob he identified as land appeared on the horizon and got larger as they grew closer.

The sense of foreboding in the pit of Percy's stomach grew stronger, and a shiver ran down his spine.

They had arrived. By this time tomorrow, Olympus would either be saved or destroyed, and it all depended on what they did in the next 12 hours.

 _But no pressured right?_


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N:**

 **Yo, guys! I'm baaaaack! Did you miss me?**

 **I know, I know, It's been like, forever. But I'm back now with a double update. Aren't I just so awesome? (don't answer that)**

 **Right, so here's what happened. At first I had my GCSE's, and as much as I want to deny it, school does come before fanfiction, so I was studying really hard for like a month. And then after all that was over, I hit some major writer's block for this story and decided to do what I do best, which is procrastinate. And _then_ , I went on the longest vacation of my entire fucking life. Most of which did not have very reliable wifi. I'm not even exaggerating, I think I've been to every major city on the entire Iberian Peninsula.**

 **So… yeah. That's my lame-ass excuse but it's pretty much all I've got. Hope you enjoy!**

 **P.S. This story is actually almost finished! Yeah! If I follow my plan, I should be done in about two or three chapters! I don't know if I'll do an epilogue yet. It all kind of depends on how exactly it ends and what you guys want.**

 **P.P.S. Holy shit. I was just looking back through the earlier chapters that I wrote to try and get back into this story, and oh my god it's actually so horrible! I don't know how you guys read it, I was legit cringing the entire time. Thanks for sticking with me through all of this. I _might_ rewrite it, I might not. It kind of depends. Especially because after I'm done with this I'll focus all my attention on _Percy Jackson: Guardian of the Earth_ (That's my other story for those of you who don't know)**

 **Okay, that is one really long author's note. I'll let you guys get to it now. Thanks for reading, my people!**

By mid-morning, the fleet with the Argo II in the lead had pulled up to the shore. Percy and his father would have sooner jumped out and swam the rest of the way, but the others convinced them that it wasn't a very good idea to split up like that. However everybody was still in good spirits, especially after seeing the matching pouting faces of Poseidon and his son when they were told that 'no, they couldn't go for a swim before they saved the world'.

Now, though, as the bottom of the ship hit land and the group of demigods began to step off their various modes of transportation and onto land, the tense air returned. This wasn't helped by the fact that the entire area around them was deathly silent. There were no birds chirping, no sound of the friendly mortal tourist, no signs of life around them at all.

In fact, the only things that broke the silence at all besides the sound of their own footsteps was the distant roar that always accompanied a large group of monsters. Or in this case, an army.

Once they were on land once again, the Romans all immediately looked much more comfortable and lost the sickly pale skin tone that many of them had taken up on the open water.

The gods all gathered together at the top of the small hill, separate from the demigods and letting them organise themselves for battle. They were all wearing their various armours and carrying their weapons. Just as they had all those years ago when they overthrew their father, the three sons of Kronos stood in front of their two sisters participating in the battle, protecting them in a way. Though they would later deny that they did any such thing.

The Romans gathered themselves into ranks according to their usual cohorts, and the Greeks all just stood together in a large, heavily armed clump, looking tired, but ready for battle nevertheless. It was obvious as soon as the Seven walked a ways up the hill to get some higher ground on the rest of the army that the two should be responsible for different things.

The Romans were used to fighting as one unit, and on their own, they would most likely be slaughtered. The Greeks, however, could not close ranks with the Romans if they tried. It was simply too restraining and didn't allow them to fight as they had been taught.

There was no longer any sort of hostile tension between the two groups, but they still stood very distinctly separated, and it was painfully obvious that the current formation wasn't going to work.

The seven all turned towards Annabeth who already had an expression of intense thinking on her face as she considered the predicament.

"Okay, here's the plan—".

A piercing whistle cut through the air, and immediately the eyes of their entire ragamuffin army was on the source: Percy.

"Listen up, guys! Annabeth's going to explain the plan!", he yelled loud enough for even the gods to hear him.

Annabeth nodded in acknowledgement before continuing with her explanation.

"So, even though we are working together now, it is really obvious that the Romans and the Greeks cannot be fighting side by side. It simply won't work, the two styles are too different".

Reyna was standing slightly in front of the legion with her position of praetor. She was wearing imperial gold armour that shone in the sun, and her purple cape billowed out behind her in the wind. Her brown eyes were almost as intense as Annabeth's grey ones, and the two met for two moments before the praetor held up a hand and silenced any protests that her fellow Romans were making.

"She's right! Listen to the plan, and _do not_ protest", she said, staring down Octavian who looked like he was about to do just that. His face looked unhealthily red, but he didn't say anything, and Reyna was able to turn back around and gesture for Annabeth to continue.

"This is the plan— the Romans will charge in a protective formation and make as large a dent in the army as you can. The greeks will follow up behind them, and cut through the remaining army until we reach the center of the horde. From there, the individual fighters of the Greeks will split up and protect the gods and their selective children who will be fighting the giants. The Romans will have then retreated to the border along the outside of the group and attack from the outside in. The two groups will work towards each other until all the monsters are gone. After that the fight with the giants should be over as well, and then we can treat the wounded, collect the dead and go home".

The group sat silent and determined as they listened to the plan, and Reyna had to admit that it was a good one. But at the end of the plan, when she talked about them all going home, a large cheer went up from somewhere in the Greek ranks, and soon the entire army joined in until it was a large war cry that resounded around the hills.

Looking back on it, it probably wasn't a good idea for them to make that much noise. But neither Percy or any of the others were in any position to try and quiet them down. After all, it was this fire that would keep them alive and fighting.

With that determination burning inside of all of them, the entire army turned and followed the Seven and the Olympians as they made their way up and over the hill straight towards Gaea's army. With any luck, the entire plan would go off without a hitch and the entire fiasco would be over and done with by sundown.

But then again, when had that ever happened?

As soon as they Olympian army crested the hill and became visible by the monster army waiting down below, the battle began.

A deafening war cry made up of various monster roars and screeches went out, and they charged.

Reyna could be heard from somewhere ahead of Percy and the rest of the Seven yelling out various commands to the legion behind her in Latin as they ran forward to meet the charge.

As one, the Romans lowered their pilums and charged. Centurions yelled out commands, and the legion split sharply into five distinct groups, each working together to make a sort of v-formation that would be perfect for punching through a solid wall of monsters.

Behind them ran the Greeks in a sort of… disorganised gaggle, all yelling, screaming, and cursing bloody murder while waving various deadly objects in their hands. The only exception to this general rule were the Apollo campers who stayed back and shot arrows from afar, using the higher ground to their advantage.

The two armies collided in an explosive shower of golden powder which momentarily blinded the Greeks who were running slightly behind their Roman brothers and sisters. When the dust cleared, they were able to make out the forms of the fighting legion among the sea of monsters surrounding them. The plan seemed to be working. The legion ran forward in their v-formation, cutting down any monster that got in their way and clearing the way for the Greeks to reach the inside of the circle of monsters and allowing them access to the larger foes, the giants, beyond.

A small gap opened up, and they took full advantage, flooding the inside of the monster's defences and streaming in through a rather inefficient bottle-neck (at least in Reyna's humble opinion).

It soon became apparent, however, that the human wall the Roman legion had formed would not hold for long. The first legionnaire went down somewhere over to their right, screaming in agony as his chest was raked open by a hellhound, it's claws tearing through his chest plate like wet tissue paper. The beast was soon killed and exploded into dust while a few of the Roman Apollo campers in the field serving as medics dragged the unlucky boy away. But the damage had been done, the line had been broken, and slowly, inch by inch, the legion was forced into a retreat.

Percy forced himself to look away, not wanting to continue watching as more of the legionnaires he had grown rather fond of during his short stay in their camp were maimed and killed. Blood soon coated the ground, the sticky red substance soaking into their clothes and shoes, staining their skin to serve forever as a reminder of what had happened.

As soon as the last Greek camper had made it through the bottle neck, the line the Romans had been holding at the expense of their lives collapsed and they retreated, running back up the way they had come to regroup and attack in a more organised fashion.

When the Greeks arrived through the first line of defences to where the giants were, the gods were already engaged in battle, having flashed themselves directly there rather than go through the wall of monsters with their children.

Through some unspoken command, their forces split, cabin leaders and the Seven going to help their respective parents, and the rest of the forces turning right back around again and attacking the backside of the monsters forces.

Annabeth and Percy met each others eyes across the blood-soaked battlefield, storming sea-green meeting determined and steely grey as they made a unspoken agreement.

 _Never again._

Never again would they let themselves be separated. They would always be together, whether that be in life… or death.

With that confirmed in each of their determined expressions, Percy turned away and ran towards where he could here the yelling and sounds of water splashing from where his father was busy fighting his bane, Polybotes.

 _Well. Looks like I have to go and kill_ _Poly-whatever_ _… again._


	14. Chapter 14

It was odd. Percy never knew what exactly to call what happened to him when he fought. It was like the entire world around him had just faded into the background, any noise or sound was muffled, there was nothing else in the world besides him, and his target.

Currently, that target was Polybotes.

And he was no normal target. Oh no. Not just because he was a giant. No Percy had gotten used to overwhelmingly large odds such as the ones he now faced. No, this was no normal target because of what was coming out of that filthy, rotten-fish-smelling mouth of his.

Now Percy could take a lot. He didn't have the explosive temper that his uncles and their children were famous for. It was another quality that he shared with his father. But just like his father, when that anger _was_ focused on you, when the easy-going laid-back sea god and his children finally _did_ snap. Only the Fates could truly help you then.

"Mother Gaea has promised us many things, you know, little half-breed!", Polybotes boomed as he caught Poseidon unawares and hit him half-way across the battlefield with one mighty swing of his trident.

The constantly off-task, ADHD half of his mind noticed how the unlucky shot reminded him slightly of the way the major league baseball players hit home-runs. Imagining his father as a baseball brought a small grin to his face. But that grin soon disappeared as he let out a surprised yelp and narrowly avoided being caught in the net the giant had thrown at him.

"Just as my brother, Porphyrion shall take Zeus' queen as his, I too shall take Poseidon's!", he boasted. Percy took advantage of the small distraction to lunge in and score a hit across the back of his right knee, drawing ichor and making the great giant stumble slightly.

If he was being honest, no matter how callus it may seem to others, Percy couldn't care less about what Polybotes wanted to do with his father's wife, Amphitrite. They didn't have the best of relationships bordering on openly hostile. Besides, if all went as it should, Polybotes wouldn't have the opportunity to do any of that anyway. Because… you know, he'd be dead.

"But I do not speak of the daughter of Oceanus as you might think I do. Tell me little bastard son, who was it your father called the 'queen among women'? Who is it that he values above all others?".

A sinking feeling of dread settled in the pit of Percy's stomach.

 _His mother. That monster was talking about_ _his mother_ _!_

In no time at all, that dread had transformed into ugly hatred. _No one_ touched his mother. _No one._

But before he could act, his father's bane, and now, _his_ bane, began speaking again.

"If nothing else, I can see that your father does have very good taste. The woman is very beautiful. But no, perhaps after I have torn your body apart, I shall take _your_ lover as my reward, hmm? Yes, she will become my queen".

He let out a scream of outrage and charged forward, but Polybotes just laughed.

"What is it, little half-breed. Has the bastard-son finally decided to fight?", he taunted, throwing his head back and laughing again. Perhaps that was why he failed to notice just how big of a mistake he had truly made.

Percy's eyes were glowing with power, the sea-green colour darkening and swirling, truly resembling the hurricanes he could control so well. A storm began to gather overhead, the clouds darkening and ominous thunder rumbling. Harsh winds blew across the battlefields, making everybody momentarily look up and around in their confusion before turning back to their own fights.

It was at that moment that Percy's father decided to show up, but it did not matter. At least, not to Percy anyways.

"Percy, what—", Poseidon started, only to be roughly cut off by Percy's enraged yell.

"No! He's MINE!", he was forced to yell over the winds of his own creation, and when his father still didn't listen, he directed one of his hands towards him, pushing him up and completely off of his feet with the force of the winds so suddenly directed onto him. Poseidon was slightly dazed by the force of it, but was quickly back on his feet, ready to help his son defeat his bane. Only to find, when he stood up, that apparently, no help was needed or wanted for that matter.

Since Percy had discovered his heritage and powers he had been afraid of them; always holding back in fear that he might accidentally hurt one of his friends or family.

But no longer.

Percy was _done_ holding back. He was _done_ struggling to hold up that barrier in his mind: that barrier, that only got heavier to lift after his little detour to Tartarus. No, this _monster_ was going to receive his full attention. Because that's all he was: just another monster. And by Percy's reckoning, he was long overdue for a visit to his father.

Percy took one large step forwards, channeling all the powers over the earth shaker part of his father's domains that he had ever learned through himself and into the ground. The earth seemed to heave beneath him: raising up to six feet above its normal level before just as suddenly slamming back down again, sending a massive shockwave out in all directions.

Demigods screamed as they were thrown from their feet and the remaining monsters roared and screamed in outrage and confusion, but Percy didn't care. No, his sole focus at the moment was the giant beast in front of him. In fact, Percy hadn't truly registered what was happening around him since the beginning of his battle with Polybotes. If he had, perhaps he would have noticed how Annabeth's plan seemed to be working; the large monster army was all but gone, leaving both demigod armies to tend to their wounded and pick their way through the dead. Maybe he would have realised the quite obvious lack of most of the other giants. In fact, the only ones left were Porphyrion and Enceladus, the latter of which was finally killed by twin blows from Athena and Annabeth due to the distraction caused by the sudden earthquake.

Only Porphyrion and Polybotes remained. And as lightning flashed across the sky in the distant other side of the battlefield, a whole other kind of storm was brewing above the enemies of the sea.

Percy ducked and slashed and fought, using all the skills he had ever been taught in his entire short, miserable life as a demigod.

Percy revelled in the feeling of freedom he felt in this fight. He was finally free of his burdens, free of his fear.

The building storm around him reached its climax, winds howling with clouds so dark they were almost black. In the distance, the sea heaved and crashed, reacting to its prince's emotions and commands. Winds began to gather beneath his feet, swirling and howling- a force of pure destruction. They lifted him into the air in the eye of his own hurricane. But this hurricane was not the miniature one he had created and used to defeat Hyperion in Central Park during the Battle of Manhattan. No, this one was a fully-grown, howling cyclone.

His black hair, dark as midnight, whipped around his face in the winds, and the only feature of his face visible from the ground at his height were his glowing sea-green eyes. Orbs which were pinned directly on the giant in front of him.

Despite the intimidating display of power, though, Polybotes just laughed.

"Oh little godling! When will you ever learn? I am the bane of Poseidon… for a reason", he said, having to yell over the roar of the winds.

With that, he lifted a singular hand up into the sky above him, directly into the swirling waters of the hurricane. Immediately the change was apparent. The water turned a sickly, distractingly bright shade of green, signifying its transformation from water into poison.

Polybotes expected that to be the end of the little half-blood's power display. As impressive as it was, there was a reason the earth mother had gifted him that particular power. The sea god and his children were powerful, but without the use of their water, they were defenceless.

Or so he thought.

Instead of the poison dropping from the circulation of the hurricane, causing it to lose power and momentum like he had expected it to, the poison simply joined the hurricane, not affecting it in the slightest.

Percy floated, his arms lifted up on either side of him as the storm, if anything, only increased in intensity and power. The boy's raven hair floated almost weightlessly around his head, the glowing green of the poison now swirling around him in his storm only serving to bask his form in an eerie light. A cruel smirk adorned his lips, and at that moment, Polybotes realised just how truly dangerous this boy was.

"Now who's to say that this _reason_ will work on me?", he taunted in a mocking tone that did not at all resemble the Percy they all knew and loved.

Even as he spoke, tendrils of poison separated themselves from the rest of the storm and reached out towards him. They climbed up his waiting arms, slowly creeping up like vicious snakes that knew _exactly_ what they were doing.

Percy threw his head back and screamed, the poison coating his body being violently flung towards its creator in the form of a javelin. Before Polybotes could even comprehend what was happening, he was being hit in the chest by something with such power that it knocked him completely from his feet.

Ichor poured from his chest from the wound the large spear made of solidified liquid had inflicted. He gasped for breath, but found he was unable to find it due to the massive pain and pressure in his chest. Roughly, he tore the weapon out, only serving to make the already fatal wound worse, and rolled onto his side in an effort to retain aether.

With a large boom and a crack, Percy fell straight from the sky where he had been suspended, and landed on the ground right next to his felled enemy, making the earth around him crack and form a small crater. He allowed the hurricane to gradually disperse as he walked. His enemy had fallen, it was no longer needed.

Percy stalked towards the fallen giant like a predator stalks its wounded prey.

 _Now. Now this idiotic waste of celestial energy could be destroyed once and for all._

"Half-breed—", Polybotes started in a warning tone, but Percy cut him off.

"Shut up!", he hissed lowly, holding one hand out and making a choking gesture.

The giant's eyes went wide with panic as he felt his airway close off. Ichor gushed from his wound which for some reason, still hadn't healed. Polybotes clawed at his throat in a panic, desperately trying to relieve himself of whatever invisible force was holding him.

He tried to speak, but all that would come out were strangled gasps.

Percy closed his fist even tighter still, and he felt his face begin to turn golden as whatever ichor was still remaining in his body was trapped in his head.

"You threatened my family", Percy said in a deceivingly calm voice. Low and rough, it rang out over the now silent battle field.

Polybotes looked into his torturer's eyes, searching desperately for any sign of mercy.

He found none.

The normally bright sea-green eyes were now glowing like poison. Swirling and mesmerising, they pulled you in before you even realised what was happening.

As the boy's hand tightening even further still and Polybotes felt ichor dribbled out of his mouth from his crushed throat, he understood.

Perseus Jackson truly was the son of darkness. Because as he looked deep into those eyes in his final moments and watched as the pure black of his pupil ran through the sea-green of his irises creating spider-web-like cracks…

…he was afraid.


	15. Chapter 15

**A/N:**

 **So… What's up, guys? How long's it been?**

 **I am _soo_ sorry, you guys! I don't know what happened! Well… I _do_ know what happened, it's just a really lame excuse. **

**Oh my gods! I haven't updated since _summer vacation_! I'm a horrible person!**

 **On a more positive note, this is the second last chapter! Yay! The next chapter I post _should_ be the last chapter, if all goes to plan. I'll probably do an epilogue after that, just 'cause I wouldn't fell right just leaving it like that. Let me know what you want it to be. (Percabeth wedding? Even farther into the future? I don't know, it's totally up to you guys). **

**Again, I am _so_ sorry! But rest assured, my faithful readers; this story has not been abandoned!**

 **Okay, now that that's done… Enjoy the chapter! :3**

Polybotes' body fell to the ground completely limp with glazed eyes.

He was dead. Anybody would be able to tell at least that much, but how that was possible was still yet to be determined.

Percy watched with similarly glazed eyes until he was sure that his adversary was well and truly dead before allowing himself to give in to the effects of what he had just done.

He hadn't noticed it during the fight, but his mouth, nose, and ears had all begun to leak blood. The energy required for him to have done what he did was simply too much for his body to handle. The taste of iron got stronger in his mouth, and groggily, he spat out a glob of blood onto the ground. As if he were in a trance, he reached up and wiped the corner of his mouth. He stared at the trail of red left on his hand without quite absorbing just what it was.

Everything around him was muffled, like he was underwater. As he looked around him at everybody left on the battlefield, he saw they were all staring at him. He frowned, wanting to know why nobody else could hear the quite frankly annoying buzzing all around him before he caught sight of Annabeth running across the battlefield towards him and he grinned. His teeth were stained red with his blood, and he could feel more of it dripping down the sides of his face from his ears.

Annabeth was crying, sobbing even, as she ran as fast as she could towards him.

' _Oh'_ , he thought, the sudden realization of what was happening hitting him, _'I'm dying'._

He tried to take a step towards her, but his legs gave out beneath him, and he suddenly found himself laying on the blood-soaked ground.

A sense of peace filled him, even as Annabeth's distraught face filled his vision. He didn't fear death. All journeys had an end, and the end always comes. He could run away from it all he liked, but if this was his time, there would be no point.

Annabeth's lips were moving, telling him to hold on and that help was coming, but he couldn't hear anything. Even now, with her golden hair bloodied from a cut on her temple and ugly tears streaming down her face, Annabeth was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

Shakily, his hand reached up to cup her cheek, and his thumb swiped across her cheekbone, catching the tears before they could ever fall.

Dimly, he was aware of the rest of the cabin councillors and the gods crowding around them, but he didn't care.

Joy as pure as he had ever felt filled every inch of his body and he felt her heart beat beneath his fingertips.

Moros had been wrong. Annabeth, the one singular person who held his whole heart, was still alive.

 _She was alive._

A gentle smile lit up his face.

"You're safe", he whispered, even as spots of black began to dance along the edges of his vision. His hand fell from her cheek, his thumb lightly brushing against her bottom lip. "I love you".

Earnestly, he stared into her eyes one last time, drinking in the stormy grey color he had fallen completely in love with, before his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he stilled.

She stared on in shock for a few precious moments before what had just happened sunk in. Her head, almost on it's own, began to shake back and forth.

"No", she whispered, almost as quietly as her Seaweed Brain's last words had been. "Come back. You can't leave me here, you hear me Seaweed Brain? You come back right now!". But even her best commanding voice had no effect on the limp body in front of her. " _No_!", she screamed, hugging him close to her. "You promised! You _promised_ never again!".

In a fit of rage, Poseidon turned away from the body of his only mortal son and threw his trident as hard as he could at the body of the giant who had killed him. Polybotes, who was still as dead as the last time they checked, had no reaction to the sudden attack but to finally dissolve into dust.

Meanwhile, behind him, Annabeth fought a losing battle against Apollo who was trying to get her away from Percy's body.

"No! No, _get off of me!_ I won't leave him!", she cried, a stray elbow flying back and breaking the sun god's nose with a loud crack.

He cursed loudly and took a few steps away from the distraught demigoddess as ichor flowed down his face.

"Annabeth", Nico said quietly, appearing from nowhere at her side. He placed a single hand on his cousin's too-pale forehead. "He's not dead yet. But he will be if you do not let us _help him_ ".

She whipped her head around to look at him, eyes burning with passion and fragile new hope.

"He's not?".

"No". He looked at her solemnly, his onyx-colored eyes like stone. But she could still see the deep sadness hidden in their shadowy pools.

Nico didn't know what Annabeth saw there when she looked so seriously into his eyes, but whatever it was was enough to convince her, and slowly, she pulled away and stood up on shaky legs.

"Help him". Her words seemed to echo much farther than they logically should have. An unnatural power filled them: power that wasn't hers.

Apollo and his son Will stepped forward, ready to help, but yet again, they were interrupted: this time, by the sound of trickling water.

As the astonished gods and demigods watched on, water from the nearby sea climbed up the cliffs and across the battlefield to reach Percy, who still lay limp on the ground. The water, which by all rights should have been murky with dust and blood from the battlefield it had just crossed, was just as clean as the sea below them. A fact, which only served to confuse those watching even further.

"Poseidon? What is the meaning of this, brother?", Zeus asked.

Poseidon stood slightly apart from the rest of the group. He leaned on his trident tiredly, and just by looking at his similarly confused face, his family could tell that he had nothing to do with what was happening.

Slowly, realization began to dawn on the sea God's face, and he began muttering a prayer under his breath in the Old Tongue that caused the four of his siblings who were with him in their father's stomach to turn to look at him sharply.

"What are you doing?", Hera hissed. He ignored her.

"What is it? What's happening?", Annabeth asked, a bit of hysteria leaking back into her voice.

He softened at the distress of the girl his son had loved so much, and explained, if only for her benefit.

"The sea comes to heal its prince", he said simply, watching with solemn eyes as his son was lifted up into the air by the water.

It formed a sphere around him, twisting and churning as though it were its own miniature ocean.

"What?", his little brother asked in a bored tone of voice. Poseidon glared at him for seemingly not caring at all whether their hero lived or died, but elaborated nonetheless.

"Did you really think that I _controlled_ the seas, Zeus. I don't control them, I rule them. I am their king, but they are not mine. They are their own force, their own _being_ if you will, and they have accepted Percy as their prince just as they accepted me as their king all those centuries ago".

Athena and her daughter's eyes widened.

"So you mean in that prayer just then, you were talking to...".

"Pontus", Annabeth breathed, finishing for her mother.

Poseidon nodded solemnly.

"The old primordial gods, the originals born of chaos are incredibly old. They have no care for the way of mortals and lesser immortals. They could care less if we lived or died. For them, there is only power and the respect warranted by that power. Just as with me, Pontus has accepted Percy to be worthy as a son of the sea".

Tears continued to gather at the corner of Annabeth's eyes, but she fiercely wiped them away as she, along with everybody else, turned to look at the violent churning sphere of water that contained Percy.

She could just barely make him out through the movement of the water, but when she did she wished she didn't.

Even through the barrier of the water she could tell his face was much too pale to be healthy. A thin stream of blood flowed from his nose and floated, suspended in the water around his head. His hair floated like a dark halo, and his body was completely limp.

He looked dead. That thought sent a shock of pain through her heart so intense, she could almost believe that a hot knife had been driven straight through her.

She looked away, unable to cope with the images and thoughts that poisoned her mind when she looked at him.

Slowly, as the rest of the Olympian party watched, the sphere of water began to glow a dark blue, the color of the deepest oceans. Even though it was a dark color, the light eventually grew too bright for even the Olympians to look on anymore, and they were forced to close their eyes lest they be incinerated.

When the light had finally disappeared from the back of their eyelids, they opened their eyes again to see the water completely gone, and Percy laying on the ground looking as though he was simply sleeping.

Apollo rushed forward his hands glowing golden as he muttered under his breath.

"But how? It shouldn't be possible. Massive internal hemorrhaging throughout his entire body... and it's just _gone_ ".

Annabeth didn't care why or how it had happened, all she cared about was that her Seaweed Brain was okay.

 _Percy's alive._

Her entire body seemed to sag with relief, and for the first time since the battle had ended, she allowed herself to feel just how tired she really was. Her head felt like it was being split in half like Zeus when her mother was being born. The glancing cut on her cheek stung from the salt of her tears, and she was pretty sure she had broken at least three ribs.

The next few hours passed in a blur. She was treated by some Apollo camper (Greek or Roman she didn't really care) and told to rest to help with the concussion she had somehow managed to acquire. All the while, she refused to leave Percy's side. He had been completely cured of any injuries, and technically, there was nothing left to treat.

He was in a coma, plain and simple. There was nothing to be done until he woke up. _If_ he woke up.

The battle had been devastating. They'd lost 30 percent of their army. _30 percent._ That was 60 demigods just... gone. Not to mention the wounded. Any and all demigods who were even slightly talented at healing were running around the hastily constructed infirmary tent like chickens with their heads cut off. Apollo himself floated around, providing help and strength to his children wherever needed. But besides him, the gods found themselves to be frustratingly useless.

Eventually, they decided to flash back to camp with the collected bodies of the deceased. Their presence among the suffering of so many of their children just served to feed the bitterness that already grew in their hearts.

Annabeth passed a hand through her boyfriend's hair and sighed when there was no reaction. He was still out cold, and something told her that he would stay that way for a while. That left the demigods leaderless, as both Reyna and the rest of the Seven were off getting their own injuries treated. Frantic and grieving demigods with no real leader or direction was a chaotic tragedy that no one should have to see much less organise. She knew she had to go before Apollo was overrun. Sun god or no, he simply wasn't equipped to deal with the aftermath of war.

' _Besides'_ , she thought, steadying herself from a sudden dizzy spell on a nearby bedpost, _'Percy would do the same if it were me'_.

—

 _ **In Percy's Dreamscape:**_

Darkness. It was all there was around him: like he was floating in space. His eyes strained, but despite their effort, he could see nothing beyond the impenetrable blackness. And yet… he was not alone. He could sense that much. Something, or rather some _one_ had called him here.

Two swirls of energy suddenly appeared in front of him, and his brain amended that statement.

 _Make that:_ _two_ _someone's_

The flurry of shadows and stars was the first to dissipate. It expanded outwards -like an explosion with no destructive force- and threw small lights like entire galaxies into the darkness all around them. The next one appeared as more of a whirlpool: a dark colour, only barely discernible as blue. Still, it felt somehow familiar to him. And when it, too, disappeared, he found out why. It melted, like an icicle above a fire, and fell into the abyss below him, forming a rough and wild body of water that he recognised as the ocean: his home.

It was only after he had taken all of this in that he remembered the two very powerful beings standing in front of him.

He dropped to a knee and bowed his head. "My Lord. My Lady".

The man to his right cocked his head. "What's this? A subservient son of the sea?". His voice was low and ancient, yet it still took on a certain… _teasing_ tone that confused him and sent his mind spinning.

The next voice he recognised all too well. "A behaviour learned in the pit. The boy is much more observant and intelligent than those Olympians seem to realise".

"Indeed".

The two beings began to pace around him, and Percy got the district impression that he was being inspected like a cattle for slaughter.

He didn't very much appreciate that, and before he could stop it, his rebellious nature made an appearance.

"And this 'son of the sea' is still here. So if you would like to explain exactly what is going on, that would be great".

There were a few tense moments of silence in which he realised exactly what he had just said, and to what kind of being he had just said it to. He was preparing himself for death when his thoughts were interrupted by deep laughter.

The man to his right, _'Pontus'_ , his mind supplied, was laughing, and the ocean below him seemed to laugh right along with him. Nyx, as per usual, showed no outward signs of amusement, but the night around them did seem to get just a little brighter.

"Ah, there it is", the Primordial god said once he had finished laughing, "I knew I wasn't wrong in healing you".

Percy was stunned. "You healed me? I'm not dead?!".

Pontus chuckled again and shook his head. "No, you're not dead. Though you were trying very hard to be. You're body is completely healed. This is your dream; once you wake up, you will be perfectly fine and with your friends once again".

Emotions clashed inside of him like a storm. _He was alive_. That was one thing he had not expected. He had not feared death- he still didn't- but life? That was a different game altogether. How could he be allowed to live when he had killed so many? Why was he still alive? What was the point?

If Pontus was expecting thankfulness, that was not what he received.

"Why?". Percy's sea-green eyes narrowed and fixed Pontus with a glare that, given the power difference between them, shouldn't have intimidated him at all. Yet somehow, it still did, and he old god found himself stunned.

"Why? I saved your life. Is that something you mortals always want: to live longer?".

"Y-Yeah. I mean, I guess so. But I'm not a mortal, I'm a demigod. And most of the time, for demigods, living is more painful than dying".

Pontus looked shocked. "So you didn't _want_ me to save you?".

"I mean, I'm glad you did. Now I know that Annabeth won't be so sad and alone because I died. But… after everything I've done, I figured it was about time I made a more permanent trip to the Underworld", he said with a shrug.

Pontus looked stunned.

Nyx scoffed, startling Percy, as he'd just about forgotten that she was there. "Oh come now, baby brother. You can't honestly be that surprised. We're all depressed here". She rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath, "Sea deities, always so emotional".

She continued speaking before he could respond to the jab. "Your survival is not the only thing we have appeared to discuss with you, Perseus".

Just like that, the mood of the conversation took a more somber tone, and the slight grin melted off his face.

"We have come to talk to you about our youngest sister, Gaea. She is… in pain". Any arguments that Percy had come up with died in his throat.

"In pain?", he asked, confused.

"Yes. You have to understand, she has been sleeping for millennia. When she fell asleep, her domain was beautiful and green and healthy. But now, she finally wakes up only to find that the mortals have destroyed _everything_. The Earth is her body. Every drill, every mine shaft pains her. She is angry, and frustrated and resentful towards the gods for allowing the world they rule to become like this".

"She _killed_ Hazel! She manipulated Leo into killing his own mother! She chained Death, and forced me to fall into Tartarus!".

Neither primordial showed any outward signs of caring.

"She must be stopped, that is true. She cannot be allowed to destroy what has taken millennia to create. And you will be the one to stop her".

Percy gaped. "Wh- What?". The world all around him began to flicker and lighten, and he felt his consciousness being pulled away. "Wait! I don't understand!".

"Think, Perseus! A primordial being has only ever been defeated by lesser beings once in known history! My younger brother—".

Percy's sea-green eyes shot open, startling an Apollo camper who had been checking on him.

" _Ouranos!_ ".


End file.
